Elections in Cantt

The Supreme Court has finally succeeded in pushing ahead with local government elections in all 42 cantonment boards of the country. This is a major triumph given that polls have not been held in cantonments for 17 years. The success in going through with them, which came after a number of orders from the SC that they be organised, is therefore an important development. It puts our democracy on a stronger track, more able to sustain itself and develop all the links required to move towards a truly stable system that can ensure representation for all people in the country at every level. While official results are to be announced today, according to unofficial results the PML-N has won 68 seats out of 199 across the country. Not very surprisingly, the PTI follows with 42, trailed by the MQM with 19 and the PPP with 7. The pattern is in keeping with the results of the elections of 2013, with the significant gains recorded by the PTI perhaps reflecting the strong voting base for the party in cantonment areas. The demographic break up of these areas is of course significant to the overall result.
We can be grateful that an important part of the democratic process has finally been completed. Even till early this year, the provincial governments and the Election Commission of Pakistan had continued to argue that for practical purposes, the polls needed to be pushed to a later date. The SC’s refusal to accept this argument is the reason we have seen people line up to poll in wards across the country. The process was overall a peaceful one with the Rangers playing a part in ensuring this in Karachi and security personnel also highly visible in Quetta. Now that the process is over, we have better representation for people who had not been able to vote in local leaders for almost two decades. In many ways local level governance is more significant to the lives of people than representation in the assemblies and in legislature at the national level. Immediate problems are dealt with by grassroots leadership. We must hope that after the exercise completed on Saturday, there will be no further periods of hiatus in the conduct of polls in cantonment boards so that peoples’ most basic democratic rights can remain protected. This is central to democratic norms and practices, and must become standard practice in our country.