Friday, March 29, 2024
12:41 PM (GMT +5)

Go Back   CSS Forums > General > News & Articles

News & Articles Here you can share News and Articles that you consider important for the exam

Reply Share Thread: Submit Thread to Facebook Facebook     Submit Thread to Twitter Twitter     Submit Thread to Google+ Google+    
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread
  #1  
Old Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Sukkur
Posts: 21
Thanks: 11
Thanked 22 Times in 10 Posts
Abdul Hadi is on a distinguished road
Default NEWS ANALYSIS: The wait for next elections may be worth it —By Fahd Husain

NEWS ANALYSIS: The wait for next elections may be worth it —By Fahd Husain

ISLAMABAD: If you are desperate to have early elections in Pakistan, don’t hold your breath. Hint: the reason is not political.

There are those like Mian Nawaz Sharif who are demanding snap polls. There are others like Imran Khan who say each passing day with this government in control is a disaster. And of course, President Zardari wants to stick it out till the last so he and his boys have got the final details of the electoral battle plan stitched up like a Hugo Boss suit.

Then there’s the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). And it may have the final say.

Here’s why: The deadline for the publication of the final electoral rolls is March 24, 2012. This essentially means if you want to have a shot at having the freest and fairest elections possible in Pakistan, you have got to wait till this date. It just so happens that the crucial Senate elections, which will give the PPP a majority, are also scheduled for the same month. Game, set, match, Zardari?

Possibly. But this political game of checkers should not diminish the significance of a quiet but extremely crucial exercise underway in a building situated on Islamabad’s famous Constitution Avenue. No, I’m not referring to the Presidency, or the Parliament, or in fact the Supreme Court. It’s the Election Commission, and it may hold the key for a successful election which has eluded Pakistan since 1970.

Organising an election for a population of 180 million is not exactly child’s play. Add to that the addiction of the politicians and the military to steal cheeky singles (and doubles) on the electoral crease, and you have a mission impossible on your hands. To make this a bit more possible, a grand exercise was launched by the Election Commission to set new rules of the game. The result of marathon consultative sessions with major political parties was a document titled “Five-Year Strategic Plan 2010-2014”. But here’s the bitter reality: Such reports published on glossy papers rarely translate into actions. It doesn’t help that the Election Commission suffers from a credibility-deficit because of having been used as a political handmaiden by all governments.

Could it then be that it is actually working towards holding free and fair elections, shorn of political gerrymandering? Is goldilocks finally going to sit in the chair that’s just right while the big brown political bears hunt in the woods?

The answer may surprise you. Let’s start with some bad news. Of the 81 million people on the electoral rolls in the 2008 elections, 37 million turned out to be “unverifiable”. Here’s the sordid breakdown: Invalid CNIC 2,140,015; Duplicate CNIC entries 2,491,090; Duplicate MNIC entries (old ID cards) 6,496,301; MNIC does not exist in NADRA database 11,056,775. If you had a dollar for each suspect electoral roll entry in the last election, you too could have been the proud owner of a chateau in France.

Translation: the electoral system stinks.

Well now the Election Commission is trying to conjure up a big air freshener. Step one: ECP handed over the electoral rolls from the last election to NADRA for verification. Step two: NADRA confirmed 37 million names could not be verified. Step three: NADRA deleted all these 37 million names. Step four: NADRA then added 36 million new names from its own fresh data to the electoral rolls. These 36 million were those people who had got their CNICs made after the last elections. Result: the updated electoral roll list is back to around 80 million names.

Enter a new player – the Census boys. It just so happens that the census is underway this year. The last one was held way back in 1998. The ECP played smart and hitched the census bandwagon like a happy camper. Starting tomorrow 211,000 people will fan across the country to go door-to-door for one phase of the census exercise. ECP has given these people forms through which they will re-verify the electoral rolls. By September 30, 2011 this exercise should be complete. Voila! Pakistan may have a list of all eligible voters.

And these voters will have a privilege no Pakistani voter has ever had before – they will be able to vote anywhere in Pakistan, not just in their home constituency. Here’s how this new system will work: If the permanent address on my CNIC is, for example, in Islamabad, but my temporary address is in say Karachi, but I’m actually now living in Mardan, no worries. I will have a choice. I can either vote in Islamabad, or Karachi or Mardan. Say I choose Mardan. This would mean that even though I’ve always voted in an Islamabad constituency, this time I get to choose a Hoti from Mardan in that constituency.

As if SIM portability was not enough, now we can enjoy voter portability. For free.

Those of you who are in the habit of casting votes in three different places, under different names, you may now have a new challenge on your hands. Breaking the system is what Pakistanis do best, and we may yet do it, but it helps to make it a bit more difficult to do. So you are a party loyalist and you love your candidate so much that you want to vote again and again and again. Come next election, however, when you go to the polling station, you might be surprised to see your photo staring back at you from the electoral roll list with the presiding officer. Okay so you have a twin, and the two of you have fooled your teachers all through school, so a presiding officer would hardly be a challenge. Except your teacher never had magnetic ink. This presiding officer will stick your thumb in this ink and then get a fingerprint next to your name on the list. Now you are in the database, and can be tracked through computer if you’ve just voted in Murree and a few hours later are dutifully standing in line to cast your vote in Islamabad too.

Will all these cool electoral gizmos work? Hard to say. What is clear though is that a serious attempt is being made to have a solid election. The four provincial election commissioners have been appointed by a parliamentary consensus as per the requirements of the 18th Amendment. Even the opposition is calling this a great step forward. The incumbent Chief Election Commissioner retires in March next year, and his successor will also be appointed through a consensus mechanism. This perhaps is one more reason why the opposition might want to wait for elections till after a new guy comes in. If the final electoral rolls also get thumbs up from the major political stakeholders, we may just have what it takes to conduct a free and fair election – or something near to that.

But all said and done, the government and the military always cast a dark shadow over the Election Commission. The biggest challenge for both of them would be to keep their hands off the electoral process, resist the urge to pressure the ECP or conduct pre-poll rigging, and wait for the voters to deliver their judgement on voting day. If this is achieved, we may have a truly successful election. Then the losers can huff and puff all they want, they won’t be able to blow this electoral house away.

The writer hosts a primetime show on a private TV channel
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
History of Presidentship in Pakistan Naseer Ahmed Chandio General Knowledge, Quizzes, IQ Tests 1 Tuesday, May 31, 2011 03:00 PM
PAKISTAN Press, Media, TV, Radio, Newspapers MUKHTIAR ALI Journalism & Mass Communication 1 Friday, May 04, 2007 02:48 AM
Islam, militarism, and the 2007 -2008 elections in Pakistan. lmno250 Pakistan Affairs 0 Friday, April 13, 2007 09:25 AM
international news agencies Muhammad Akmal Journalism & Mass Communication 0 Tuesday, June 06, 2006 11:33 PM
Bi standards of West, freedom of speech Syed Ali Haider Current Affairs 3 Friday, April 07, 2006 01:02 PM


CSS Forum on Facebook Follow CSS Forum on Twitter

Disclaimer: All messages made available as part of this discussion group (including any bulletin boards and chat rooms) and any opinions, advice, statements or other information contained in any messages posted or transmitted by any third party are the responsibility of the author of that message and not of CSSForum.com.pk (unless CSSForum.com.pk is specifically identified as the author of the message). The fact that a particular message is posted on or transmitted using this web site does not mean that CSSForum has endorsed that message in any way or verified the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message. We encourage visitors to the forum to report any objectionable message in site feedback. This forum is not monitored 24/7.

Sponsors: ArgusVision   vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.