Overseas voters and failed I-voting system

The 22nd Prime Minister of the country took oath in the official swearing-in ceremony this month that culminated his struggle of 22 years — from one seat in 2002 to a reality of forming a government at the Centre. The new premier has assigned the ministries to victorious members of the party, with few names surpassing our expectation. Despite the fact that Khan’s party stood ahead of other contenders, winning a simple majority remained a task until the extended hand of nine independents, who were cruised all the way to Bani Gala by Jahangir Tareen, and an addition of 28 reserved seats totalled the count to a sweeping 158 in the lower house. In addition, seven smaller parties joined hands with the PTI, helping it outnumber other major parties in the fray.

However, fulfilling the list of promises made by Khan may take a while as ground realities unfold on the newly-seated leadership, acquainting them with the alarming condition of the state institutions and a depleting economy. The government’s performance is under the radar amid the soaring high hopes of the common man who waits to see a Naya Pakistan. The question still stands: Will the votes cast to choose a new face to lead Pakistan be able to bring a promised change, with the same old clan of electables who once had loyalties tied to the traditional political groups?

Khan once again has had to look for the support of the diaspora who once extended him a helping hand to raise money for his charitable work, in the days of the building of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital. Outside Pakistan, the world is home to 7.8 million expatriate Pakistanis who have continued to send remittances to the country for years. For the first seven months of the ongoing fiscal year (July to January), only, $11.383 billion have been received from the expat community, as per the PEW research reports. Nonetheless, eternal patriotic spirit pushes thousands of families to fly every year to Pakistan in summers and winters to spend their hard-earned money here, despite the scorching heat in summers with long hours of power outages and in winters with similar issues of its own. Despite all that, a large number of expats prefer Pakistan as their holiday destination.

Yet to date no policies have been framed to accommodate the basic constitutional rights of the Pakistani expat community, which has remained the least priority of the successive governments. Imran Khan was the first to raise voice for the overseas Pakistanis’ right to vote. His effort bore fruit when he filed a petition in the Supreme Court of Pakistan back in 2012 and then chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Election Commission of Pakistan to chalk out a plan for the expats to vote, before the 2013 general election. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had issued a notification to consulates and embassies around the world. It was in the same context that Sardar Balkh Sher Khosa, then community welfare attaché at the consulate general of Pakistan in Sydney, had invited the Pakistanis residing in Sydney to register their votes with the consulate for the general election of 2013 and thus the Pakistani mission had responded to the request of almost 26,000 dual nationals who wanted a change in their country of origin. This number of registered voters was related to just one of the 127 Pakistani missions around the world. Had the instructions from the former CJP been acted upon, the outcome of the 2013 elections may have been different.

We again saw the PTI struggling for the voting right for overseas Pakistani in the 2018 general election. It’s still not known whether the new Internet-voting system will be tested in the upcoming by-elections in October, with no clarity on how the registered voters will be able to cast their votes for a particular constituency or any nominee. With these uncertainties prevailing, the PTI may once again lose a major share of votes like in the recent elections which forced the party to join hands with smaller political groups to form government at the Centre.

With Pakistan undoubtedly passing through its worst period in history, it’s an opportunity for Imran Khan and his cabinet to realise the importance of each vote given for a Naya Pakistan. In addition, efforts should be made to utilise Pakistan’s finest human capital settled abroad, who have left the country due to unemployment and lack of progress forcing them to look for new avenues. The overseas vote bank issue needs to be addressed immediately, and brought in parliament for the consideration of the people’s representatives. 

Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2018.

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