LAST Sunday’s by-elections in Lahore have revealed cracks in Pakistan’s system of electoral democracy that call for urgent mending. The main issues that have again come under focus are the underdeveloped culture of electioneering, excessive campaign expenses, flawed safeguards against electoral malpractices, impact of the intra-right tussle and increased demands for election reform. All these issues have been a matter of debate for years and lack of any meaningful progress towards their resolution breeds frustration in the democratic camp.

The PML-N and PTI both avoided talking politics during the battle for NA-122 and the debate between them was largely limited to the exchange of invective or allegations of corruption and dishonesty. This kind of juvenile name-calling can never help improve people’s appreciation of democratic politics and provide them with indicators to measure the merit of the claimants to power. Unfortunately, no ready medicine is available to cure the country’s political leaders of their allergy to civil discourse. Strong censure by civil society and media alone could perhaps persuade them to try to develop into reasonably mature shepherds of the flock.

By all accounts, the by-election to the NA-122 seat was an extraordinarily expensive affair and it once again underlined the consensus that election has become essentially a money game that a vast majority of the people cannot think of joining. This means power will remain in the hands of the vulgar rich, the premium on political corruption will go on rising as the winners of elections will be in a hurry to recover their investment with interest, the people will be tempted more and more to sell their votes and a genuinely representative political authority will remain a mirage. The situation will not improve unless the Election Commission strengthens its expense audit capacity and enlarges the list of what is not to be allowed at all.

The biggest threat to honest elections comes from public servants chosen to conduct the process.

The issue of electoral malpractices, from impersonation by voters to organised rigging, has been central to the debate on elections for more than a century. The whole discussion has been premised on the belief that political parties and candidates will do everything possible to win an election. The remedies range from the condition of holding a general election under a neutral caretaker regime and reliance on judicial officers for every bit of the electoral task. The latest prescription has been the deployment of armed forces inside polling stations and at the time of the vote count.

This amounts to a substantial leap from the usual practice of arranging for a military presence in the vicinity of a polling station so that it could intervene in a situation beyond the polling staff’s control. It is also a move contrary to the ideal of responsible conduct by polling staff, voters and political parties without the force of law-enforcement agencies. This experiment will send wrong signals all around.

No polling without soldiers close by will be accepted as fair and the environment of contempt for civilian politicians will become stronger. The demands for the military’s increased involvement in electoral issues will go on escalating. Besides, it is grossly unfair to the armed forces to go on asking them to take up responsibilities that by no stretch of the imagination can be included in their normal call of duty.

The biggest threat to honest elections comes from public servants chosen to conduct the process. The ECP often has had difficulty in controlling them, even in learning of their mischief in time. Strict supervision by the government and the ECP, creation of arrangements for rapid intervention whenever things go wrong and statutory provision for monitoring by civil society activists can possibly raise the level of electoral probity.

It has become customary to limit the issues in electoral reform to the way the Election Commission of Pakistan functions. But the commission is often blamed for matters that lie within the jurisdiction of political parties and the public at large. In case of complaints of arbitrary delimitation of constituencies and flaws in electoral rolls, including partisanship in the process of addition or deletion of votes, the political parties and candidates too must accept the blame for failure to seek correction at the right time.

The plight of the PPP that joined the fray without repainting its image and without developing a coherent narrative to justify its political rebirth in Punjab has underscored the danger in the reduction of politics to an intra-right tug of war. The people will suffer for retreat from the concept of a welfare state.

There is also need to listen to the ECP on problems it appears to be facing. The permanent, all-judge ECP is still an innovation and the need for an evaluation of the way it is functioning cannot be gainsaid. The experiment of choosing a judge from each province may need a review because it could make the ECP a house divided. Besides, a line ought to be drawn between what must be done by the ECP as a whole and what lies within the chief election commissioner’s executive authority.

Also the long-standing demand for ending judicially framed persons’ monopoly over the ECP and for the inclusion of a woman in it cannot be put off forever. If the ECP with all the judicial experience at its back complains of interference by the judiciary, the matter demands redress as expeditiously as possible. Further, parliamentary consultation on electoral reform must be subject to a time limit.

Above all, the politicians must stop demanding that everybody behave properly while they themselves strut across the political landscape in the manner of tinpot czars steeped in their feudal habits. Fair elections need, among other things, democratically functioning political parties, the raising of cadres committed to democracy and a fair system of consultation with these workers at various levels. These matters have been ignored far too long at the cost of democratic norms.

Published in Dawn, October 15th , 2015

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