Elections in Pakistan are often treated as do or die affair by the contending parties. Pakistan, the country with the world’s most incoherent and fraudulent electoral system, now hopes for “free and fair” elections in coming May. Free and fair voting is one of our rights; we have waited an unbearable long time for real democracy and freedoms. The people of Pakistan are chimed in with their own hopes for the economy, development, and democracy. For the first time, a civilian government in Pakistan has completed its five-year term on 18 March 2013 (Though at the cost of more than Rupees 18000 billion), and the door is now open for the first civilian transition of power in Pakistan’s history. As the country prepares for landmark elections for national and provincial assemblies, look at the electoral framework needed to ensure fair and free polls. It is expected elections will continue to be conducted under dubious and questionable circumstances unless something is done to reclaim the integrity of the electoral process currently under siege by corrupt politicians.
Electoral laws in Pakistan have many loopholes. Unfortunately, over the years, Pakistan’s various governments have not been serious in addressing electoral reforms. Lack of electoral transparency and accountability, the use of money or violence to influence or intimidate voters and the criminalization of politics are critical problems in Pakistan. All these acts make the electoral process a simple farce. Manifestations of electoral violence in various elections are changing form and character, with negative implications for democratic stability and consolidation.
Today, most elections conducted usually follow allegations of rigging. Various methods of electoral rigging here in Pakistan includes: ballot box stuffing, ballot box hijacking, collusion between electoral staff and party officials and agents, illegal printing of voters lists, falsification of results and inflation of votes. In some polling stations, there are cases of multiple voting. In others, voters are unable to cast their ballot because upon arriving they discover that somebody else had already voted for them. Electoral fraud is also committed by illegally interfering with the process of an election which affects vote counts to bring about an election result, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, or depressing the vote share of the rival candidate. Never underestimate the power of money too in this election. Voters can become starry eyed when they are tempted with money.
In a poor country with rampant corruption, vote-buying is inevitable to induce the marginal voter. People rarely vote for the best candidate or party; as they hate to see their votes “wasted” on sure losers. Large amounts of money are ploughed into vote-buying and politics becomes an arena for caste leaders, millionaires and criminals with muscle power; a voter goes into the polling station and takes his ballot without placing a vote. Then he goes outside and marks it. Now he can go up to anyone in the party camp and say, “Go to the polling station and pick up your blank ballot, but drop this ballot into the box, and bring the blank one back to me.” And if he brings the blank ballot to the agent sitting in the camp, he gets Rupees 1000 or so. A number of candidates used the same methods for cheating in the past. It has become malignantly a progressive phenomenon in the Pakistani democratic process and a means to ensure electoral success while subverting contemporary notions of ‘credible’, ‘free and fair’, democratic standard, or a minimum, regular, honest conduct of elections in the selection candidates between choices. There are hundreds of ways of using money to ensure victory by doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, where no law is broken or impropriety committed.
The people in Pakistan are getting tired of the current crop of the politics and they want a change. The country needs to change its electoral process into something more meaningful, clean, and transparent. It has to be understood that Pakistani politics still has a good number of honest leaders and parties which are genuinely working to improve things. The need to have clean and honest candidates for the general election has become an imperative for all political parties. The electorate demands this. Above all, they want clean candidates whose integrity is beyond reproach. In order to reform our electoral democracy, and open it up for honest citizens, we must start looking for an alternative electoral framework in which vision, policies, hard work and ideology matter over the marginal votes. We should work towards the ideal of seeing honest, dedicated and able citizens to get elected through the Electoral Process. Let us hope and pray this country will be blessed with such candidates to form the government that will be free from corruption, committed to upholding the rule of the law and preserving the principles of integrity, accountability, transparency and good governance. They should be free from allegations of corruption, be they real or imagined, or any scandal relating to immoral behavior, money politics or abuse of power. God bless us all to make the right choice
