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IT’S not often that I find myself on the same page as Imran Khan, but on the question of electoral reform, he has my total support.
As we face another hotly contested general election next year, the prospect of yet more rigging charges is very real. The fact is that we as a nation are not very good losers. Umpires, referees and judges are often blamed for our defeats, and we refuse to face the possibility that we lost because we weren’t good enough on the day.
Moreover, the ongoing census is sure to redraw constituencies on a large scale. This will reflect the rapid urbanisation the country is going through, and reduce the clout of our powerful landowning class.
Under these circumstances, a fair and transparent election is even more necessary as the ones we have had in the past have seldom been free from controversy. Indeed, I do not recall a single one — apart from the 1970 election — that was accepted as untainted.
Far too often, the fingerprints of our intelligence agencies are all over the results. Local muscle also plays its part in determining the outcome, as does the bureaucracy. Incumbency is another major factor that favours the ruling party as it uses public resources to finance much of its campaign.
Modern technology can end election controversies.
Thus far, the Election Commission (EC) has been utterly impotent in halting any of these common practices. For instance, the limits on electoral spending are hardly ever observed by candidates and, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever been unseated for overspending. And yet any observer can see that the limit is being violated across the country in the run-up to each election.
Above all, the general election is an administrative, not a legal, exercise. So the tradition of appointing retired judges as election commissioners is hardly useful when it comes to supervising an army of low-level government employees who perform the routine tasks involved in the elections.
Mostly, these are teachers from government schools who have little experience or knowledge, and are also vulnerable to pressure from their superiors, and threats of violence from the police and the goons hired by candidates. Presiding and returning officers are more senior and have their careers to protect; they thus tend to favour candidates from the party expected to win.
And when candidates who have witnessed industrial-level rigging lodge complaints before the EC, they invariably get bogged down in red tape and endless delays. Imran Khan had initially demanded a recount in four Punjab constituencies, but was denied. This then escalated into a full-blown political crisis over rigging, something that, together with corruption, has become the PTI’s signature tune.
However, countries in our region like India and Sri Lanka have been conducting controversy-free elections for decades. India has successfully used electronic voting machines (EVMs) for years in conjunction with a voter-verified paper audit trail. This technology is virtually tamper-proof, and the results it has generated have never been challenged.
EVMs are a bit like the Umpire Decision Review System (DRS) used in cricket, and now in other sports as well. It eliminates doubt and dissent, and provides a level playing field. So why won’t our EC adopt this technology to end the controversies that surround every election?
Also, why aren’t overseas Pakistanis being allowed to vote in our elections? Most other countries accept this basic right but, for some reason, we have been unable to tackle the administrative hurdles involved. All it takes is for Pakistani citizens abroad to download voting forms and mail their ballots by a certain date, together with copies of their passports or NICs. Certainly not rocket science.
But first we need to change the composition of the EC, replacing ex-judges with upright retired civil servants, if there are still some of this dying breed left. They will have insights into how the bureaucratic electoral machinery actually works, unlike EC members today.
Then there should be some time limit on how long the EC takes to dispose of complaints. Currently, appeals drag on for years, with the complainant forced to spend large amounts in legal fees. But, just as they allow huge backlogs of cases to build up, our judges are not very concerned by the inconvenience and expenditure they force on candidates by their lethargy.
On the other hand, we are bad losers and it is a common tendency for defeated candidates to cry foul. To deter frivolous complaints, there ought to be a penalty if a complaint is rejected, just like the DRS penalises a team for a rejected appeal.
As a cricketer, Imran Khan campaigned for neutral umpires and, as a result, there is far less controversy surrounding umpiring decisions than there used to be. He was right then, and he is right in demanding electoral reform now to restore credibility to a broken system.
Published in Dawn, April 1st, 2017
