Finally after all the threats, May 11, 2013 passed relatively peacefully compared to previous elections. Winners termed it a free and fair election while losers called it a rigged one. But political pundits across the world are of the view that it was among the fairest elections in the history of Pakistan as compared to previous ones.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) emerged as the most successful party, as was the expectation of most of the population. On the other hand, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) lost its position as expected, but perhaps to a greater degree than expected. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) emerged as third major political party of the country with its remarkable victory in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the critical province of the country where to form government and perform is not as easy as it seems. The political dimensions of the province are very critical; the PTI will have to work out a sensible strategy. People of the province want change and they have voted the PTI in the name of the ‘change slogan’, otherwise, it will fail. Certain ‘power groups’ might force it to follow their agenda.
In my opinion, the problem with the PTI is that it is regarded as the party of the elite. The PTI’s leadership will, in future, have to devise a strategy to go to grass root level and to dispel the impression that it is the party of the higher echelons of society. Almost 60 percent of Pakistani population lives in rural areas and political observers are of the view that the PTI was almost absent on polling stations in the rural areas. Despite liking Imran Khan, people were voting for electable people, not for the PTI candidates as it did not work in the peripheral areas and its political campaign was limited to the centre.
At the outset of 2013 election results, a new political arena has been framed. The PML-N, the victorious party, is going to form government in the centre and in Punjab, the most populous province of the country. The PML-N will have to work very hard to bring the country out of its many crises. The foremost among them are the energy crisis and law and order situation across the country, especially in Karachi and Quetta. Although politicians make huge claims before elections that they did much to tackle energy crisis but in reality successive governments have not paid due heed to the problem, which is why general public is suffering from this ‘man-made calamity’.
All the political parties will have to shun their differences, accept the mandate of the more successful political party(s) and work in the best interest of the country to bring it out of the crisis situation. Recently, in a private TV channel programme, debate between Khawaja Asif of the PML-N and Maula Bux Chandio of PPP did not seem encouraging but I am happy that it ended with the firm belief that right now it is not the time to blame each other, but rather to work collectively to solve the problems of the common man.
The PML-N government will have to work on emergency basis to improve the energy sector and law and order situation. Other important steps that the upcoming government needs to take are target-oriented education, strengthening institutions by systemic re-engineering and a robust accountability mechanism to eradicate menace of corruption, as country is on the verge of disaster due to corrupt elements in society.
National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the apex anti-corruption agency of the country is doing its best with limited resources to eliminate/minimize corruption. According to its annual report 2012, NAB recovered Rs 25 billion looted money in the year 2012 and another 200 billion rupees were saved through its Awareness and Prevention regime by intervening into projects having worth rupees 1.5 trillion. This is a remarkable achievement of the Bureau under supervision of its former Chairman Admiral (Retd) Fasih Bokhari.
NAB annual report says: “For 65 years and through 59 different legislations ‘Enforcement’ as the primary anti corruption tool has not worked. Pakistan’s corruption marks matrix hovered around 2.5/10 since start of Transparency International Corruption Index. Pakistan’s constant corruption index is indicative of major system flaws in Constitutional, Legislative, Regulatory, and Governance structure.”
The need of the hour is to strengthen the accountability system by giving the prime anti-corruption watchdog an administrative and financial autonomy. National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999 is termed as one of the best anti-corruption laws in the world. New government can make certain amendments in the light of guidelines provided in the United Nations Convention against Corruption, an international agreement against corruption ratified by Pakistan in 2007, rather than rejecting the law as was the desire of the previous regime to have a ‘controlled accountability body’ by bringing new accountability law. One can easily see flaws in the proposed accountability law of previous regime as compared to the NAO that was vetted by the honourable Supreme Court of Pakistan in 2002 in Asfandyar Wali case where 79 amendments were made.
Eliminating corruption from the country is an urgent essential task to accomplish but it can only be done through an independent accountability body without any interference in its affairs.
The writer is working as Media and Public Relations Officer with NAB and student of M. Phil IR at Iqra University Islamabad. He tweets @irfanchaudhri and can be reached at [email protected]
Note: The views presented in the article are the writer’s own and do not represent his organisation