ECP’s spring cleaning

The failure to comply with Section 202 (2) of the Elections Act of 2017 has resulted in the cancellation of 284 party enlistments and we are elated. It is not necessarily because of the exact names that were delisted — though, admittedly, there is also some excitement on that front — but we welcome the move more so because it supports cleaning up the messy political landscape of the country where hundreds of major and minor parties exist but serve little purpose or hardly contribute to the betterment of the country.

We are, indeed, a country where people pride themselves on being party members but stop at the recognition of their party’s name and don’t do much else, except wear their party badges on their sleeves when gains can be made. This is perhaps why this developing country has developed a current list of 64 political parties vowing to serve but has achieved little in the way of development itself. The cancelled parties include the MQM, the PML-F, the Sunni Tehreek, and others. Before we rejoice though, let us examine the implications of this development.

Although they are cancelled on paper, it is most probably owed to laziness in submitting necessary paperwork and complying with the Election Commission of Pakistan rules in a timely manner. They may wake up and decide to follow through with appeals to re-enlist their parties and we certainly know funding is not a problem for them so the Rs200,000 ECP enlistment fee is petty cash. Regardless, we can expect to see their representation on ballots come elections, potentially making this development inconsequential, because we are very familiar with seeing political parties bend rules in their favour. Nonetheless, we encourage the ECP to review other parties and their platforms to determine if they deserve to be enlisted or whether they have illicit tendencies. The political flora of the country comprises cliques rather than effective political organisations. No country of this size or status requires this many political parties and the cancellation of 284 seems like a headline out of a satirical newspaper. The ECP’s move is welcome and we will not miss the delisted parties.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2018.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.