Making Elections Work for People in Pakistan
“Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin
The electoral process is not an end in itself, only the means to an end. It is intended to yield good governance as a result of citizens exercising accountability through the power to vote out poorly performing governments. And good governance, in turn, is supposed to yield the outcome that matters to people – social development and a rising quality of life for all.
Seen in this light, the electoral process in Pakistan has failed. Some elections have not even been allowed to proceed and each one held has worsened the situation; one of them actually led to the breakup of the country. The reason is not difficult to fathom – in every instance the will of the people expressed through the vote has been subverted. In most countries elections are keenly awaited to find out what people want. In Pakistan, they are morbidly awaited to find out how what people want would be denied.
There is an important question to consider: How much room is left for this damaging process to continue before the system collapses? As in the past, this time too the signs are ominous leading one to worry about the distance to the edge of the precipice.
Be that as it may, the electoral process should not be dumped because it alone concedes some power, that of the vote, to citizens and they should not relinquish it under any circumstance. It is equally obvious, however, that the system as presently constituted nullifies that power very easily and effectively.
What then is to be done? While citizens should vote judiciously, that alone will not be enough to neutralise the forces arrayed against them. They need also to think of changes that would make the system more responsive to their will in order to yield meaningful outcomes. While obtaining such changes may seem an uphill task, citizens should not underestimate the power of collective will. In any case, the first step is an articulation of what needs to change in order to put some alternative ideas into circulation.
Personally, I am in favour of sortition – the random selection of representatives from the pool of all eligible citizens – because that would eliminate most existing problems in one go. However, I will set that radical solution aside and offer some suggestions for consideration and critique to improve the existing system:
1. All agencies against which there is undeniable evidence of subverting the electoral process need to be disbanded.
2. All candidates who have switched political parties more than three times in the past should be debarred from standing for election for a period of ten years, if not altogether. The stable of politicians for sale is one of the main instruments in making and breaking parties and destabilising the electoral system. This would also enable a younger generation to enter the political process.
3. There should be a residency requirement both for political representatives and other holders of public office. An individual should have lived in the country for at least three of the last five years to be eligible for office. The practice of fly-in-fly-out saviours is harmful to accountability and to the sustainability of the system.
4. The choice of candidates in any constituency should not be limited to those nominated by political parties. There needs to be a primary process that allows citizens a say in the choice of the final contenders. There should also be a provision for write-in candidates and a procedure for recalls if representatives subvert the mandate on which they were elected.
5. The monopoly on politics of a very narrow set of people and its monarchical and dynastic nature needs to be broken. Since women are half the population but an extremely marginalised group, one option would be to require that half the representatives should be females. Each political party should be mandated to divide its tickets equally between men and women. This could, over time, radically alter the dynamics of governance in the country.
6. No candidate should be declared elected from a constituency with less than half the votes cast. This would require the provision of a second round between the two leading candidates if neither has obtained more than fifty percent of the votes in the first round. This provision should do away with the subterfuge of fielding fake parties in order to split votes. Increasing the number of electoral contests with primaries and second rounds should also make their manipulation more onerous.
7. Campaigns should be financed from public funds to do away with the power of money to influence electoral outcomes. There should be no ferrying of ‘electables’ in private planes of those who look to benefit from particular electoral outcomes.
Once a government comes into power under these new provisions, it should be subject to a further set of restraints:
8. There should be Credentials Committee to approve the appointment and promotion of all heads of agencies and departments. This has become necessary because of atrocious appointments made in the past based on patronage and to exploit public positions for private profit. These have crippled most public sector organisations which are being kept alive with taxpayer money and inflated tariffs.The vetting of candidates should ideally be a prerogative of governments but needs to be delegated temporarily to civil society till such time as governments earn back their trust for probity.
9. No individual receiving funds from the government for any purpose should be eligible to become part of an official or advisory body constituted by the government. This is an obvious measure to eliminate conflicts of interest which have gone unchecked to date.
10. All ministers and public representatives should be entitled to the same privileges and services available to ordinary citizens. This would be the surest way of ensuring that the standard of public services improves rapidly. Living in private bubbles while pretending to serve the public is guaranteed to perpetuate the dismal status quo.
This list is intended to initiate a discussion that is badly needed because the system has been deliberately warped to benefit a few at the expense of the many. It can be modified as new ideas are generated. Continuation of what exists should not be tolerated because that would make life unbearably precarious for the majority and increasingly anarchic for all.
Citizens should not forget that the power of the vote also confers the power to withhold it if the system is blatantly manipulated – there is no compulsion to choose the best of the worst. Withholding the vote in protest is a form of peaceful mass organisation to obtain a right that belong to citizens, that of having the expression of their will count in the governance of the country. It is true that even in the face of such a protest someone will still be elected or selected but if the turnout falls below a certain percentage, the outcome would lose all credibility and legitimacy and force a confrontation of the problem. Acquiescence in the status quo will only push the country ever closer to the day of reckoning which doesn’t promise to be pleasant.
James Baldwin once described the prospect of a country “so tangled and so trapped and so immobilized by its interior dissension that it can’t do anything else.” The situation is much more grave when the objective of rulers is to deliberately keep alive the state of interior dissension and block all avenues to doing anything else. Should we vote to continue to suffer in such a system?
The "should" is the problematic part? What if he doesn't do so for the downs?
Simply do away with elections, parliaments, ministers and impose Martial Law. The actual ruler should take responsibility for all ups and downs.