The cat is finally out of the bag. After crying foul over alleged rigging in May 2014 general elections for almost two years, Imran Khan’s efforts finally seem to be yielding results. An election tribunal, probing election fraud in one of the constituencies, has declared that the voting process was manipulated to favor Saad Rafiq, a stalwart of the ruling PML-N government. With this decision, Khan has scored a major moral victory over Pakistan’s Premier Nawaz Sharif as his claims of massive rigging in the polls have gained more credibility.
While Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) may be celebrating the tribunal’s verdict, it may not prove to be disruptive for the Sharif government. The government has already announced its intention to challenge the decision in the country’s apex court. Meanwhile, Sharif is enjoying a moment of political respite and economic revival after braving large sit-in protests and rallies led by PTI across the country last year. Given the current circumstances, Khan may not be able to build significant public pressure and leverage the tribunal’s decision to corner Sharif. In case this decision would have come at the time of public movement against the government, it would have certainly caused a major dent in Sharif’s popularity.
However, the ruling has raised a question mark over Pakistan’s nascent democratic setup. The 2013 general elections were historically significant for Pakistan as a transfer of power from one civilian government to the other was achieved through ballot box for the first time after more than 60 years of independence. Even more encouragingly, about 55 percent of the registered voters had also turned out to exercise their democratic right. Therefore, if rigging allegations are proven to be true, democracy in Pakistan will face a major setback, as people of Pakistan will once again begin to doubt the merits of this governance system and the power of their vote. What is the point of spending billions of rupees of taxpayers’ money to carry out a fraudulent process? This development would be regrettable as after a long time, the voters had shrugged off their traditional apolitical stance to ride high on a wave of political consciousness.
The election fiasco also offers Pakistan a chance to look back at the past and prepare for the future by improving its electoral system. To a large extent, the onus for these improvements lies squarely on an independent and fair Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and the political will of federal authorities. At the same time, Opposition parties should play a constructive role in identifying and implementing proposed improvements in the electoral process.
In particular, the stakeholders should review steps related to the published electoral rolls, role and accountability of polling staff, and voting by expatriates.
It would be interesting to see how the findings of these election tribunals impact the overall decision of a judicial commission examining the fairness of elections. While the polls may not have been perfect, even international observers termed them to be free and fair to a large extent. For the sake of rooting democracy in Pakistan, it is hoped that allegations of “systematic rigging” in the elections turn out to be false and the highlighted instances of irregularities only remain isolated cases.
