KARACHI, Oct 11: It appeared less a polling day and more a day of strike on Thursday. The streets were deserted, there was hardly any traffic, shops were shuttered, and boys played cricket on roads as a dry and hot wind blew. There were more people in cinema halls queuing up for the matinee show than voters at the polling stations. Karachi was voting.
If there was any activity at all, it was in the city’s old areas, Nishtar Road, Lea Market, Kharadar, parts of Lyari, Moosa Lane, and Burnes Road. Some shops were open, eating houses were doing less than normal business, and hawkers sold their wares.
In Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Defence, Clifton, Nazimabad, and North Nazimabad, election activity showed itself only at party camps. Rivals kept their peace, and law enforcement agencies appeared relaxed. Nevertheless, they were present in force everywhere.
When this reporter went to cast his vote at a polling station in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, a policeman — polite and correct — stopped him, and asked the reason for his visit.
“I have come to vote,” the reporter said.
“Please wait! The returning officer will come here.”
“The returning officer will come here?”
“Yes, those are his orders.”
The cop went inside, and within a minute the RO appeared.
As far as this reporter can recall in his four decades of voting career, this was the first time that an RO came to the gate to receive a voter.
“Yes?” he said.
“I want to vote.”
“Please come in,” he said. He was nicely dressed.
“I have a problem,” the reporter said. “I do not have my national identity card.”
“I am sorry, then you can’t vote,” he said. “What happened to your NIC?”
“It is attached to my passport, locked up in my bank locker, and I forgot to get out in time for this day.”
This reporter then showed him his Dawn ID, with his photograph. “Will this do?” he asked.
“I am afraid not.”
“Why not? If the purpose of the NIC is that a voter be identified, then I stand identified. Look at my Dawn ID, look at my photograph, see my face, and read the NIC number written here.”
“I am sorry, this is still not possible,” he said. “During our training I specifically asked whether we could accept driving licences, passports and company and college ID cards, and the election commission said ‘no.’ So that’s the position. No NIC, no vote.” The man stuck to the rules.
There were no other voters at that time. But voting picked up later in the day.
The car drive through the old city was bumpy with battered roads, potholes, mounds of garbage and speed breakers.
At least one person gave a very philosophical reason why he did not cast his vote. A resident of the Lyari area, he said he attached more importance to his duty. Besides, “My party will win or lose even without my vote. So I rather attend to my duty.”
A fruitwallah said he would vote later in the evening. Like most bearded people, he appeared serious and thought it was his religious duty to vote. A Qasid in a company said he would cast his vote after his duty was over. He lives in Sultanabad.
Another voter belonging to a low-income group and living in Old Golimar said there were about 15 to 20 people at his polling station. Because he appeared ill, other voters made way for him to vote.
Yet it would be a mistake to come to the conclusion that the deserted streets necessarily meant a low turn-out. One reason for the lack of rush at polling stations could be a vast increase in the number of polling stations by the government. Besides, the constituencies were relatively small.
A retired oil company official said he had 12 registered voters in his home, and 10 of them went to vote at a polling station located at the Pilot School in Gole Market, Nazimabad No 3.
In contrast, a Jamshed Road area advocate said his home had 11 votes and none went to drop his vote.
“Why not?”
“Because,” he explained, “no candidate or his worker came to my home to solicit my vote. They should have come to tell me what their previous record was, that they were unstained by corruption, and that in the future they had some definite socio- economic schemes in mind for the nation. They did not come to me, so I did not bother to vote.”
In Garden East, a businessman-cum-agriculturist and his wife said it was too hot to go out and vote. “My two sons voted,” he said, “both voting for different parties.”
In the Clifton area, a paper tycoon went to cast his vote alone at the Jennings School on Fatima Jinnah Road. “I tried to persuade my wife to vote, but she refused, saying politicians only fool the people. This election drama makes no difference to the people’s condition. The people remain as deprived as ever.”
A secretary in a company said he did not vote, “because I never vote. I do not believe in voting.” Well, abstention too is part of democracy.
On Nishtar Road, some poor slept on bare sidewalks in the blistering heat. One wondered if they knew that all this struggle for power was being waged in their name.
