Editorial

Shooting the messenger — again

PML-N has decided to challenge the tribunal’s decision declaring the election in NA-125 null and void

Editorial May 07, 2015

Election Tribunal had declared the 2013 election in the constituency of NA-125 to be null and void. The seat had supposedly been won by Khawaja Saad Rafique. PHOTO: RIAZ AHMED/EXPRESS

If the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is unable to see the irony as it cries ‘foul’ having been found wanting by the election tribunal, then the rest of the world most certainly does. It will be recalled that the election tribunal — set up by the sitting government it must be remembered — declared the 2013 election in the constituency of NA-125 (Lahore-VIII) to be null and void. A fresh election has been ordered within 60 days. The seat had supposedly been won by Khawaja Saad Rafique, a PML-N stalwart and currently the railway minister, and the PML-N has reacted badly to a medicine of its own formulation.

Doubtless somewhat taken aback at having been found to be less than pure, the PML-N has decided to challenge the tribunal’s decision. Members of the PML-N hierarchy, looking suitably shocked at this turn of events, held a press conference on May 6 at which a member of the cabinet, Ahsan Iqbal, said that the ruling party “do not want to set any dangerous precedent” because in future people might be tempted to point out electoral irregularities and seek to overturn a result. Surely, this is the point of the entire exercise? One does not set out to clear up a mess on the lounge carpet and leave half of it stinking and very much still there.

Plainly put, you cannot have your cake and eat it too, and if there are electoral irregularities that are unearthed by an election tribunal and they are committed by whichever party, then the tribunal is right to rule without fear or favour — as it did in this instance. If that means that taken nationally an entire election is invalidated such is the scale of irregularity, then so be it. Bleating piteously because a star player has been sidelined — and the evidence as presented by the tribunal is damning and sufficient to render the election in NA-125 invalid — is not the way forward.

It would be far better for the credibility of the PML-N and the electoral process had it quietly accepted, with good grace, that it had been found wanting and moved on. A faint hope, perhaps.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 8^th, 2015.

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