If democracy, national progress & Pakistan are to survive despite odds, it is imperative that everyone who can, votes.
KARACHI: I was delighted by two trends that could portray a novel evolutionary change in the country’s electoral process. One is the variably discretionary disqualification of candidates by relevant returning officers (RO) in their pedantic interpretation of the letter and spirit of the constitutional clause requiring legislators to be sadiq and ameen. The other, most progressive and with far-reaching implications, was the proposed “none of the above” option on the ballot paper. Sadly, that has been removed but it brings in new opportunities.
Now that Articles 62/63 have painfully boomeranged, there is much ado about the fairness of the nomination acceptance process. The loudest noises are from the very persons who have been everything except what was specified. As long as degrees could be faked, national wealth stolen, taxes evaded and murderous hypocrisy imposed in the name of religion, our honourable legislators had no qualms about their abhorrence of honesty and blatant violation of these two and many other clauses of the Constitution. Interestingly, the rejection of nomination papers of liberal Ayaz Amir seems to be the focal rallying point for the hypocritical dishonest many.
This is the legacy Zulfikar Ali Bhutto started, General Ziaul Haq honed to perfection and not one of the six successive governments felt the need to amend, even while they were in complete violation of every aspect of these open-ended clauses. Not even General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, whom we hoped would bring that radical change that has eluded us in the previous 30 years of overt military rule and whatever passed for governance in the remaining. For me, this is his biggest indictment. Barring a few honourable exceptions, these governments were aided and abetted by our pillars of the state, some of which now seem to be trying to redeem their tarnished honour. However farcically, and it would seem selectively, applied this attempt by the Election Commission of Pakistan at cleansing the Aegean Stables is, it is still a start that bodes well for the future.
In multiple choice questions, often there is an “all” or “none” of the above option. In our scattered electoral history, I do not think there have been more than a couple of occasions where more than 20 per cent of the voting population has exercised that right. This means that the “winning” candidates or skewed referendum choices probably represent 15 per cent or less of the overall votes and not 180 million Pakistanis as some of our braggarts claim.
Yet, there is hope for us. If democracy, national progress and Pakistan, as envisaged by our founding fathers, are to survive despite the odds, it is imperative that everyone who can vote do so this time. Many major and minor crooks have been rejected by the ROs, along with some possibly good persons. Since the voting populace is not entirely stupid, this is the opportunity to come out en masse and vote either for those deserving candidates or, by stamping multiple names, exercise the ‘none of the above’ option for the crooked, incompetent and retrogressive forces that have slipped through the filter net. God willing and with the efforts of the maximal electorate, Pakistan will be able to lift its head from the depths we have fallen to. And if we are lucky enough to have the exercise repeated five years later, then we definitely will return to the international community of nations.
Dr Mervyn Hosein
Published in The Express Tribune, April 14th, 2013.
