Daily Times

LAHORE: Gallup Pakistan Chairman Dr Ijaz Shafi Gilani said on Thursday that a slow and evolutionary advent of civilian supremacy was underway in Pakistan.

Dr Gilani said this while delivering a special talk on the Electoral History of Pakistan, under the auspices of PILDAT. The lecture was attended by people belonging to all walks of life including human rights activists, journalists former officials of election commission.

The talk was held on the basis of Dr Gilani’s upcoming book: ‘The Melodramatic Electoral History of Pakistan (1970-2013)’.

The book deduces by demonstration, an evolutionary trend in Pakistan’s electoral history, systematically analyzing 10 elections since 1970. The research uses polling data on the level of constituencies from Election Commission of Pakistan, and uses it to analyse division of vote bank on a federal and provincial level.

“If we look at the polling data from the past 30 years, we see a constant evolution and consistency barring the 1977 election, and reflect the will of the people despite several arguments considering Pakistan unfit for democracy. The data shows a constant division of the vote bank between Pakistan Muslim League and their allies, and Pakistan People’s Party and its allies with PTI becoming a major factor instead of PPP since 2013 Election,” he said.

Dr Gilani’s upcoming book outlines a history of elections in Pakistan over the course of the ten elections, tracing an evolution, as well as reasons for it based on historical and political processes. He also narrates the rise and fall of political parties over the years.

The book predicts a slow and evolutionary advent of civilian supremacy through a firm adherence of the Rule of Law and the Constitution, establishing a firm identity and solidarity as a political class and building up grass-root governments as the source of Building Political Parties. According to Dr Gilani, the 1970, 1997 and 2013 elections marked the three most important milestones of Pakistan’s electoral history. He said that in 2018’s election, there would be little to no change in the division of the vote bank despite a tumult in the political scenario in the country.

Published in Daily Times, January 26^th 2018.