Daily Times

Currently under treatment in a UK hospital, the PTI’s chief counsel, Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, tried his best to prove before the Judicial Commission (JC) that the 2013 elections had been selectively rigged by the ruling PML-N in dozens of seats in Punjab. Having sufficient reason to feel cheated, the PPP’s legal counsel, Senator Aitzaz Ahsan also weighed in. Unfortunately, my friend cannot even begin to imagine the extensive pre-polls rigging, well documented by both the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and MI, done by his own party in interior Sindh.
On the basis of evidence placed before the JC, individual PML-N (and PPP) leaders should be held accountable. Fraud did take place but no clear-cut smoking gun points to organised rigging. However, the chaotic conduct after elections by the Election Commission (EC) seemed to mostly benefit the PML-N, with considerable bias in the verification of whatever election material was available. The Constitution preserves the sanctity of the ballot box; the vote is a sacred trust that must be cast with freedom and counted with great integrity thereafter. At best, the flawed 2013 electoral process was a mismanaged, farcical exercise. A democratic government coming into existence on this basis is in violation of the Constitution.
To restore the credibility of the democratic dispensation, a parliamentary committee is working to reform the electoral system and should seriously get on with it. Simple and straightforward principles must prevail: there should be no indirect elections for the Senate, the National Assembly (NA) or the provincial assemblies. Being basic to democracy, local bodies’ elections must precede general elections. All candidates, aspiring for seats in the assemblies or the Senate, must take part in the local bodies’ elections to clearly define their roots. Without a clear majority, run-off elections should be obligatory. There should be proportional representation to ensure that all stakeholders have full participation in governance. All candidates must be taxpayers. A credible biometrics and electronic voting system should be introduced. A national census (the last one being held in 1998) must determine the re-allocation of seats in the assemblies before any fresh elections. The 2008 and 2013 electoral exercises were not truly representative mandates of the country’s electorate.
Anything contrary to a Solomonic JC judgment will bode ill for democracy. Are the developments in Sindh, where special powers have been given to the military through the Rangers for combatting terrorism, a precursor of future events, a full-scale dress rehearsal? The most corrupt provincial government in Pakistan’s history exposed itself to ridicule by complaining that the Rangers had exceeded their mandate by targeting the PPP’s corrupt appointees in government. The military is straitjacketed in its mission statement by the Constitutional parameters imposed upon it to choke the funds facilitating terrorism. The federal government, albeit on prodding from the GHQ, advised the Sindh government to extend the Rangers’ mandate for one year, starting July 20. Did the Sindh government park its corrupt loyalists out of the firing line in various sinecures because of pressure from the apex committee or out of sincere intent? One hopes a compromise was not agreed to for not indicting the PPP’s corrupt — a Faustian bargain targeting only one political party in Karachi will undercut the credibility of the army’s resolve. Moreover, the feelings of persecution will be played up by motivated elements. All criminals must be held accountable, whatever their party affiliation.
General Raheel Sharif spent Eid with his troops in the field, who are sacrificing their lives combatting militants. The fact that the heads of our major political parties, Mian Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, celebrated Eid with family and friends in Jeddah, London and Dubai respectively says it all. By their physical presence in areas of difficulty and danger, leaders show that they care for those they are responsible for, not by giving lip-service through well-crafted Eid messages from abroad. Consider Shahbaz Sharif giving instructions for flood relief via video-link from London and Asif Zardari holding court of a key PPP hierarchy in Sindh from Dubai. Comprising nepotism, blatant corruption, self-delusion and hypocrisy, our democracy is slowly but surely eating away at our vitals as a nation. A reality check must decide what future we envisage for our children: one of deceit and deception or the one bequeathed to us by divine destiny and the sacrifices of our forefathers, the promise of which we have frittered away over the years by living in the farce that we call a democracy.
My article in the Pakistan Army’s Green Book 2014, ‘Achieving national security through democratic dispensation’, states: “Make no mistake, national security is presently under serious threat. It is high time we acknowledge this fact and consider the alternatives. The Westminster model of democracy certainly has not performed well. Civil liberties, in the hands of people who are not liberal minded, will be misused by them and this freedom will produce anarchy and corruption instead. Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore consistently rejected liberal democratic values; he said that there should not be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to a democracy. His successors persist with laws restricting the freedom of speech. In a situation where Pakistan’s security is threatened by a weakened state, bad governance, rising militancy and multiple other problems, the idea and practice of ‘democracy’ surely needs to be updated and adjusted to ground realties, amended so that it improves the governance of the country, restores the rule of law and enables the institutions of the state to function effectively, in particular the government and the military, to cooperate more efficiently coalescing the development of an effective working national security concept that both are able to implement jointly.”
Without the electoral process being rectified, our present democratic dispensation cannot support our social and economic development. The JC must give a pragmatic roadmap for restoring democracy along constitutional lines; failure to do so will lead to us ending up like Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. There is criticism from the vested and motivated that, unless the JC does the right thing by ensuring electoral reforms and conduct for a free and fair electoral process, there will be anarchy and the requirement of national security will then override democracy. The military will be in dereliction of duty if it does not act, however reluctantly, out of the much-maligned doctrine of necessity. The caveat is that, unless the army puts in place an effective checks and balance mechanism, those who try to right the wrong things usually end up doing the wrong things themselves.

The writer is a defence analyst and security expert