With the selection of its four provincial members, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is now complete and, ideally, ready to hold much-delayed by-elections and hear pending petitions.

Earlier this week, a 12-member parliamentary committee announced the names of retired Justice Altaf Ibrahim Qureshi (Punjab), former federal secretary Abdul Ghaffar Soomro (Sindh), retired Justice Irshad Qaiser (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and retired Justice Shakeel Baloch (Balochistan).

The matter landed with committee after the prime minister and leader of the opposition couldn’t agree on the names amongst themselves.

The 22nd amendment, passed hurriedly in June this year, removed the constitutional bar limiting the choice of candidates to retired judges. The argument given at the time was that conducting elections was a primarily administrative job, members who bring other qualifications to the table could prove helpful.

But even after changing the rules, three out of four new members are still retired justices, while only one is a former federal secretary.

This begs the question: why have political parties and the parliamentary committee tasked with selecting ECP members preferred judges to bureaucrats or professionals from other backgrounds yet again?

To find out, Dawn spoke to lawyers, political commentators and politicians, who offered interesting and varied responses. The observation that was common across-the-board was that the incumbent political leadership lacked the courage to try new things with the ECP at this point in time, with PTI emerging as a potent political force. For human rights activist and Supreme Court lawyer Asma Jahangir, politicians believe that “this honorable work” can only be performed by retired judges.

“I think a retired judge is the most unsuitable person to manage elections,” she said, adding, “It’s an issue of mindset; politicians have only experienced working with judges at the ECP.”

However, Ms Jahangir was happy that for the first time, a woman had been inducted to the commission along with a retired federal secretary. Therefore, one can expect that things would improve with the passage of time, she concluded.

Political analyst Hassan Askari Rizvi, however, had an altogether a different viewpoint on why politicians had only chosen retired judges. “To me, this seems like it was settled between the ruling PML-N and the opposition PPP; they reached a consensus over the names through some sort of bargain,” he said.

Mr Rizvi’s argument was that the two parties presented names of their own choosing for ‘political convenience’ and later, selected the new ECP members by bargaining amongst themselves.

“Our political elite always detests independent-minded professionals and cannot afford to have an individual of such breed at the all-important ECP,” Mr Rizvi insisted.

Now that they have been appointed, the members’ future conduct will determine whether they are linked to a certain political party, or have been given the responsibility purely on the basis of their professional achievements, he said, referring particularly to the hearing of petitions against the prime minister and his son-in-law for not declaring their assets.

Talking to Dawn, a member of the parliamentary committee came up with an interesting answer for why they didn’t have many options from amongst retired bureaucrats. Speaking off the record, the lawmaker said that unfortunately, the country’s civil services had been heavily politicised over the past few decades.

Civil servants do not feel ashamed to be associated with a certain political party and the latter have no qualms claiming that such-and-such bureaucrat is following their ideology, the lawmaker said.

For example, the current secretary to the prime minister, Fawad Hassan Fawad, would always carry the legacy of his PML-N connection, even after retirement. There are others who carry similar baggage: former interior secretary Tasneem Noorani is openly associated with the PTI, while Salman Farooqi’s association with former President Zardari is no secret either.

To a question, the lawmaker said that judges might have links with different political parties, but they were not as well-known as those between parties and certain bureaucrats.

One retired bureaucrat, when asked to comment, said that unlike retired judges, many civil servants might not be interested in the job.

Now that the ECP is complete, all eyes will be on its acts of omission and commission in the coming weeks and months. PTI chief Imran Khan has already expressed his reservations since none the names his party had proposed, were considered.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2016

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