Legitimacy of 2013 General Elections

Pak­istan is faced with many prob­lems today and there is no doubt that ter­ror­ism is the biggest one of them. The cur­rent gov­ern­ment is work­ing on its Inter­nal Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy and has so far only draft­ed some laws which are indeed ques­tion­able and dra­con­ian in nature. This gov­ern­ment has proved unable to take a sol­id stance against ter­ror­ism and is there­fore fail­ing on its man­date to tru­ly rep­re­sent the peo­ple of Pak­istan. This fail­ure is cer­tain­ly also due to con­tro­ver­sies asso­ci­at­ed with the last gen­er­al elec­tions which raise many ques­tions about the legit­i­ma­cy of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment.

On May 11 2013, Pakistan’s his­tor­i­cal gen­er­al elec­tions took place. This was the first time that a civil­ian gov­ern­ment con­duced elec­tions after com­plet­ing its tenure. How­ev­er the elec­tions are like­ly to be one of the most cor­rupt elec­tions, arguably the sec­ond most rigged elec­tions in Pakistan’s tur­bu­lent polit­i­cal his­to­ry.
To give a brief his­tor­i­cal back­ground, the first gen­er­al elec­tions were con­duct­ed in Pak­istan in 1970. This elec­tion was unan­i­mous­ly regard­ed as the most fair and free elec­tion in the his­to­ry of Pak­istan. But all the elec­tions that have fol­lowed ever since have had some ele­ment of rig­ging. The 2013 gen­er­al elec­tions are no excep­tion.

Let us in this con­text ana­lyze the reports of Free and Fair Elec­tion Net­work (FAFEN), an advo­ca­cy group for mon­i­tor­ing elec­tions and ensur­ing trans­paren­cy. Accord­ing to a recent­ly pub­lished report of FAFEN, in 35 out of 266 Nation­al Assem­bly con­stituen­cies the num­ber of reject­ed votes is high­er than the numer­i­cal mar­gin of vic­to­ry. This means that if reject­ed votes had been count­ed, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the results being in favor of a defeat­ed can­di­date would have been very high. Reject­ing a vote is an arbi­trary deci­sion of the pre­sid­ing offi­cer and only an impar­tial inquiry in this mat­ter can reveal the real rea­son why the votes were reject­ed. Indeed, the stag­ger­ing num­ber of reject­ed votes can­not be ignored.

Polit­i­cal par­ties such as Pak­istan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) raised their voice against alleged rig­gings the very next day of the elec­tions. Many defeat­ed can­di­dates appealed in elec­tion tri­bunals. Some cas­es were sum­mar­i­ly reject­ed, some are still pend­ing, and the tri­bunal ordered ver­i­fi­ca­tion of thumb impres­sions on the votes polled in some oth­er cas­es. The con­stituen­cy of NA-258 Karachi was the first place where thumb impres­sions were ver­i­fied. The results showed that only 2475 votes polled out of 32695 in 33 polling sta­tions were legit­i­mate. The next con­stituen­cy where thumb impres­sions were ver­i­fied was NA-256 Karachi. The results were sim­i­lar. Out of the 84,448 cast­ed votes, only 6,805 were ver­i­fied. The num­bers are stag­ger­ing and the results reveal a rig­ging of myth­i­cal pro­por­tions in these con­stituen­cies, which is enough to ques­tion the legit­i­ma­cy of elec­tions in these and oth­er trou­bled con­stituen­cies.

When the thumb ver­i­fi­ca­tion results came out, expos­ing the huge elec­tion rig­ging, the win­ners, in pan­ic, decid­ed to seek help from the court to pre­vent fur­ther ver­i­fi­ca­tion by thumb impres­sions. Many can­di­dates were able to secure stay orders on thumb impres­sion ver­i­fi­ca­tion and this effec­tive­ly cur­tailed any efforts to expose fur­ther rig­ging in gen­er­al elec­tions. Among those who cur­tailed the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process was Chief Min­is­ter of Sindh, Qaim Ali Shah, who secured a stay order in his provin­cial con­stituen­cy of PS-29. Ejaz Hus­sain Jakhrani of Pak­istan People’s Par­ty (PPP) acquired a stay order for his con­stituen­cy of NA-208; Nawab Ali Wasan of PPP did the same for his con­stituen­cy of NA-215. In Pun­jab, Malik Riaz of Pak­istan Mus­lim League – Nawaz (PML‑N) acquired a stay order on NA-118. The list of can­di­dates that have acquired a stay order goes on and on.

The ques­tion that now aris­es is, if there had not been any rig­ging and the can­di­dates had won fair and square, then why fear thumb ver­i­fi­ca­tions? No prize for guess­es here.

There are oth­er indi­ca­tors that those who won elec­tions did every­thing pos­si­ble to cur­tail the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process. The thumb ver­i­fi­ca­tion process was car­ried out by Nation­al Data­base and Reg­is­tra­tion Author­i­ty (NADRA). In order to stop NADRA from ver­i­fy­ing more thumb impres­sions, the PML‑N gov­ern­ment in Pak­istan first sacked its chair­man Tariq Malik. Tariq Malik was rein­stat­ed by Islam­abad High Court the next day. The gov­ern­ment then start­ed using bul­ly­ing tac­tics against Malik. He was unfair­ly ques­tioned by Fed­er­al Inves­ti­ga­tion Agency for irreg­u­lar­i­ties, gov­ern­ment agents fol­lowed his wife and an anony­mous per­son from Faisal­abad threat­ened his daugh­ter on her mobile phone. Tariq Malik even­tu­al­ly suc­cumbed to the pres­sure and resigned, just as the gov­ern­ment had intend­ed.

If the elec­tions had been fair, why did the gov­ern­ment resort to such cheap tac­tics that led to the res­ig­na­tion of the NADRA chair­man?

The PTI has been vocal against mas­sive rig­ging in Pun­jab province by PML‑N. In Sindh, PPP was blamed of rig­ging the elec­tions in inte­ri­or Sindh, and Mut­tahi­da Qau­mi Move­ment (MQM) in Urban Sindh. PTI is blamed by its oppo­nents to have won elec­tions through rig­ging in the province of Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa. Balochis­tan which is an insur­gency wrecked province was the biggest vic­tim of rig­ging. No thumb ver­i­fi­ca­tion has tak­en place in Balochis­tan and if it had been con­duct­ed in some con­stituen­cies then it cer­tain­ly would have revealed rig­ging even greater in mag­ni­tude than in oth­er parts of Pak­istan.

The 2013 elec­tions have been mas­sive­ly rigged and every­one sup­ports this claim oth­er than those par­ties who have won the elec­tions. For the sake of for­mal con­tin­u­a­tion of democ­ra­cy, the result of the elec­tions has been accept­ed by all polit­i­cal par­ties.

Now there isn’t much left to be done, but the gov­ern­ment must ensure that such mas­sive rig­ging doesn’t take place in the 2018 elec­tions. This can only be ensured by using an elec­tron­ic vot­ing sys­tem. The incum­bent win­ners should not brag about their man­date because it is con­tro­ver­sial and they should rather do their utmost to bring elec­toral reforms till next elec­tions.