Deeply
controversial election
Rashed Rahman
As was widely
perceived during the election campaign, the 2018 elections have proved one of
the most controversial in Pakistan’s history. Imran Khan’s Pakistan
Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) has stumped most pundits by arriving within a whisker of
a simple majority at the Centre. It has overturned the received wisdom that
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa tends to vote out incumbents after one term. It has won
seats in Karachi and is hobnobbing with the establishment-created Balochistan
Awami Party (BAP) for accommodation in the set up in Balochistan. But perhaps
its greatest success is trailing the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) by a
handful of seats in the latter’s stronghold Punjab. Whereas at the Centre the
gap between the PTI and PML-N seats, 116 and 64 respectively, presents little
problem in reaching a majority with the help of smaller parties and
independents, in Punjab there is a no-holds-barred jockeying for roping in
similar elements for a coalition government. In this regard the Pakistan Muslim
League-Quaid (PML-Q) is helping to bring in independents along with its own
eight seats to help the PTI’s own efforts to cross the finish line.
Almost all major
and minor political parties except the PTI have rejected the polls as rigged, not
only before voting day on July 25 but also on the night of that day when
results were being counted and announced after inordinate (and therefore
suspicious) delays. There is a plethora of reports in the mainstream and social
media pointing to the anomalies, flaws and worse that accompanied the counting
exercise.
On the eve of
the polling, a video was circulated on social media in which a member of the
polling staff in some unnamed constituency relates his and his colleagues’
experience. He claims his polling station staff was ‘commandeered’ by the
military contingent deployed for security and law and order duties, told how
the polling was to be conducted, and on protest that this was not the job of
the security detail, roundly scolded and confined in a room while the ballot
boxes were taken into and counted in the security detail’s office. Intriguing
indeed.
The losing
parties have all complained that their polling agents were turfed out while the
counting was in progress, and in many cases, not provided Form 45 showing the
final tally of votes. Whether this ‘commandeering’ of polling staff, pushing
out of polling agents and failure to provide Form 45 was universally ‘applied’
or confined to a few critical constituencies has yet to be determined. Critical
voices have condemned this gerrymandering of the results as ‘overkill’. The
argument goes that there was a wave in favour of the PTI and it would most
likely have won even without such ‘assistance’. So why take the risk of making
the election controversial through such sleight of hand?
The answer perhaps
lies in the widespread forecast by most commentators that the elections most
likely would yield a hung parliament and even if the PTI won a plurality, it
would be hard put to it to cobble together a coalition government. Such a
coalition government, if achieved, would be internally weak, divided and
unwieldy. It would be unable to cope with the challenges facing the country in
the realm of the economy, terrorism, internal security, foreign policy, etc. Perhaps
this chorus of warnings regarding what was to come struck a chord in the
corridors that matter. The exercise therefore was retuned to provide if not a
simple majority to the PTI, at least to bring it within striking distance of
the magic number of 146 (out of 290 National Assembly general seats contested).
That appears to have been achieved. The Central government therefore seems
already to be in the PTI bag.
This perception
was confirmed by Imran Khan’s victory speech, in which the prime minister-in-waiting
bent over backwards to sound statesmanlike, going so far as to offer the olive
branch of opening up the vote count of any constituency about which the
opposition had complaints. On the evidence so far, however, Imran Khan seems to
have eliminated the Lahore seat he won from Khwaja Saad Rafique from such
proper re-examination, according to the latter.
The aggrieved
parties went through some convolutions in their mutual deliberations before
deciding to eschew any militant thoughts of an agitation. The PPP led the way
in this regard, influencing perhaps the PML-N’s decision not to go for a
boycott but to enter parliament under protest. Preliminary discussions between
the PPP and the PML-N show a glimmer of what is to come. If their cooperation
in the house is agreed, this formidable opposition (over 100 National Assembly
seats) promises to give the new PTI government a tough time. Both major parties
are persuading the MMA led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman not to boycott parliament
but instead strengthen their hand in the house.
The PML-N is
demanding a judicial probe into the conduct of the elections. Its Central
Working Committee has promised a White Paper on what happened in the elections
in detail. One area of focus for such an exercise should be the large number of
votes (ballots) rejected, especially on seats where the margin of victory was
low, and often less than the number of ballots rejected.
Defectors from
the PML-N and other parties who fought the election as independents suffered a
virtual wipeout. Contrary to traditional political wisdom, their voters did not
‘accompany’ them on their opportunistic about face. This speaks volumes for the
changed, enhanced awareness of voters, many of whom berated their constituency
candidates during campaigning for not having done much for them during five years.
Perhaps the people themselves have started their own embryonic democratic
accountability of our political class. However, the independents that have
succeeded find themselves positioned as king makers in return for the largesse of
the incoming PTI-led governments in Islamabad and Lahore.
The
mainstreaming of terrorist and extremist front parties produced contradictory results.
On the one hand, these outfits fielded an incredible number of candidates and
garnered more votes than anyone had a right to expect. The fact that they won few
seats may not have been the object of the exercise. There exists a school of
thought that sees the participation of Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan and the Milli
Awami Party less as a serious effort to enter parliament in large numbers and
more as a vote bank breaker of the religious, right wing constituency of the
PML-N. Nevertheless, the limited success and relatively large vote count raises
hackles regarding their entry into parliament in a bigger way next time round.
Many honest
citizens were left scratching their heads after the polling. Saddened at the
thought that Pakistan has yet to see a genuine democratic system emerging
despite the second consecutive transfer of power through the ballot, they
wondered out loud whether Pakistan’s fate was tied to ‘choosing’ governments under
the unrelenting shadow of (the threat of) the bullet rather than the ballot.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
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