AN unusual problem has been solved in an unusual manner, giving rise to the usual speculation of partisanship and bias.

A troubling Supreme Court judgement ousting Nawaz Sharif as the president of the PML-N and voiding all decisions taken by Mr Sharif since his re-election as party president has created a significant problem: with Senate elections scheduled for March, what would happen to the tickets approved by Mr Sharif as PML-N president?

A quick resolution was needed and the Election Commission of Pakistan responded with alacrity. But the ECP has opted for an astonishingly poor solution: allowing the PML-N candidates to contest the Senate elections as independents. Neither has any rule been cited nor has a convincing explanation been offered by the ECP for its highly unusual solution to an urgent problem.

Particularly striking is that one of the four options considered by the ECP was to give the affected PML-N candidates time to resubmit their paperwork, but the option was rejected. It is not clear why the option was rejected, especially since the PML-N chairman, Zafarul Haq, visited the ECP on Thursday to sign fresh party tickets.

Compared to unilaterally stripping candidates of party affiliation — a drastic step — while maintaining their candidacies as independents, the option of allowing the PML-N to recertify the very same Senate candidates of the party would appear to be relatively straightforward. Now, an unfortunate impression has been created that a sequence of events was put into motion to deny the PML-N automatic seats in the Senate and allow horse-trading to take place.

The old practice of horse-trading appeared to have been buried until a sudden resurrection in the Balochistan Assembly recently — also an episode that stripped the PML-N of its members in the provincial assembly.

If the PML-N opts to elect its Senate candidates as originally intended, the incoming senators will be independents, who have the option of choosing a political party to join in the Senate or form a party of their own.

Surely, attempts at horse-trading will be made by other political parties in the Senate and perhaps by anti-democratic forces outside parliament.

An election held without candidates from the largest political party in the country is an undeniable farce. To be sure, the PML-N’s recent skirmishes with the judiciary have helped contribute to a sense of national political crisis. But that is arguably all the more reason for the ECP to have chosen a course that would shore up a teetering democratic process in the country. Shocking as the decision to only allow PML-N to field independent candidates is, there are other potentially destabilising implications of the ECP’s interpretation of the Supreme Court judgement disqualifying Mr Sharif.

Will recent by-elections, for example, the fierce contest in NA-154 Lodhran, be nullified? An independent ECP must act fairly if its independence and autonomy is to be accepted by all.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2018