May the fourth

Hamid Khan or a fresh PTI candidate may still be defeated in by-election, but what needed to be done has been done

May 2013. The general elections — record of sorts: first time an elected government had finished its five-year term — were held, and conducted smoothly. With a zillion or so, what later came to be known, as ‘irregularities’. The result was a mixed bag of what, how, why, huh and hai-Allah. And then came the biggest hullabaloo known to Pakistan’s very turbulent electoral history. Let’s just assume one’s history is a bit hazy, or maybe one doesn’t feel very comfortable reminiscing, very painfully, about the election results one was too young to even register in 1970, and too young to fully grasp the importance of in 1977. The non-acceptance of both marked Pakistan in more ways than one, and that’s already been analysed in a million ways, all of them ending at the same point: military dudes are not a good fit in civilian institutions. Or clothes.

Before one meanders off the subject totally, let’s return to that one night in May when results were announced for the national and provincial assemblies, and one man roared louder than all the real (rented) and human lions of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in a hum-jeet-gaye celebratory mode. His main-nahin-manta was audible on all TV channels, and FM radio. Nah, not Shahbaz Sharif singing Habib Jalib. Aside: one likes the younger Sharif for his usage of aptly-inserted verses, and passionate oratorical rhetoric in rallies and cabinet meetings. It was Imran Khan. Although not many other than the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) young, middle-aged and old thought the party would bag more than 40 seats, the final tally was a big let-down for all who voted — many for the first time, including yours truly in an urban constituency — for the party of change.

Four results were shocking, sort of in the what-the-hell category, and not just to the PTI brigade, on and off social media. Alleging that rigging might have taken place in 25 National Assembly constituencies, Khan’s stance was categorical in the rejection of the results of four — NA-110, NA-122, NA-125 and NA-154. In NA-122, the losing candidate was Khan himself; the shock of this result silenced the young and old in Lahore, this scribe included, and while there was acceptance of the PML-N’s overall victory — not much to be said when the winning margin is in three digits — there was nothing-doing when it came to the four constituencies that would be analysed in painstaking detail by the psephologists and historians of Pakistan in years to come.

The rest as they say is complaints to the election commission, lawsuits, protests, marches, rallies, resignation letters, and the mother of all dharnas in Islamabad last year. Yes, the same one that was longer than the list of votes polled for some not-to-be-named candidates in rural constituencies. May 4, 2015 was the day known as the Star Wars Day globally, but May-the-4^th-be-With-You would have a special meaning for Khan, his coterie of confidantes, PTI supporters, PML-N leaders, their supporters, and those who take malicious glee in watching others go down. Oh and that loud-mouthed, swaggering Saad Rafique. One remembers him as one of the good guys, the few pragmatic Pakistani politicians, some four-score months ago, but then who knows what happened to him. He kinda changed. And not in a good way, I tell ya. One constituency result has been declared null and void, and Rafique has been given the boot. Or as Khan would state or tweet: justice has finally been done.

Interestingly, one voted in the very same constituency, and that brings to mind the topic for one’s next article: how ‘irregularities’ are just a soft name for institutionalised rigging in our elections. Now that is one subject that makes one fume in a few bleep-able words, so let’s just stick to Rafique and his departure from the National Assembly. Until the fresh election.

Hamid Khan or a fresh PTI candidate may still be defeated in the by-election, but at least what needed to be done has been done. The electoral process was flawed and full of votes that were either bogus, unverified, or of people who didn’t even exist. This was the election that was full of ghosts, and as L M Montgomery muses, “The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did.” The verdict may still not be very clear, but let the exorcism begin. Starting May 2015.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 6^th,  2015.

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