THE Khyber Pakhtunkhwa local government election was flawed on many counts — this much is already obvious. But does overall mismanagement and sporadic incidents of serious violence amount to a stolen election?

Unhappily, political parties in the country are once again engaging in their seemingly favourite pastime: contest an election and then, if you’re on the losing side of the people’s verdict, challenge the election’s authenticity in whatever manner possible.

That, aside from casting a shadow over the immediate result, also has the unfortunate tendency of impugning the democratic system itself.

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If seven years into the transition to democracy and multiple elections later the state machinery somehow contrives to hold the most shambolic election yet of the present era, then what does that say about the system itself?

If there is a silver lining though it is that this time the parties themselves appear to be backing away from the brink.

The PTI supremo, Imran Khan, has perhaps inadvertently helped by being his usual blustery self and vowing to hold elections again, in their entirety or in part, if the ECP determines that is what is required.

However, the basic problem still remains: the relationship between the ECP, the superior judiciary and the government on whose watch an election is held appears to quickly degenerate into an adversarial situation.

For example, in KP, the PTI-led provincial government has simply claimed that administrative and policing responsibilities on the day of the LG election were handed over to the ECP and therefore it would be wrong to blame the PTI for any mismanagement. But what did the PTI do to mobilise the provincial government set-up before the election to educate the voter in the run-up to the poll?

Initial reports suggest that it was mismanagement that led to chaos at some polling stations — but that mismanagement appears to have taken place because both the polling staff and the average voter were unsure about what exactly needed to be done.

Surely, that dual confusion is primarily the fault of the ECP and the provincial government — indeed all the mainstream political parties, none of which evinced any interest in educating the voters about a complex and new balloting process.

Furthermore, it has now become apparent what happens when the ECP and provincial governments are effectively pressurised by the superior judiciary into holding elections according to a timetable they are not comfortable with.

To be sure, the delay in holding LG elections was scandalous and most mainstream parties are not eager to devolve power to the grass-roots. To that extent therefore pressure from the Supreme Court has helped realise a constitutional necessity in terms of holding LG elections in two provinces.

But the biggest challenge — elections in Punjab and Sindh — is yet to come and perhaps now is the time for state institutions to learn how to solve problems together.

Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2015

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