The rigging of Pakistan

In his obsessive campaign to de-legitimise the May 2013 general elections, Imran Khan has apparently moved a bit ahead this week. On Monday, an election tribunal declared the NA-125 polls null and void, ordering the Election Commission to hold a re-election in Khawaja Saad Rafique’s Lahore constituency. Ongoing proceedings of the judicial commission, probing the conduct of the elections to decipher if there was a plan for systemic rigging, have also spawned some helpful headlines.
Ah, but isn’t every project assigned to our national and bureaucratic institutions thoroughly rigged? And why aren’t our political leaders sufficiently mindful of the degradation of the Pakistani society? What are our priorities at this time – in addition to the war against terrorism and extremism?
Incidentally, some aspects of what I am attempting to highlight were manifest in a by-election held on Thursday in Lower Dir for a seat in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly. Bear in mind that Imran Khan’s party is in power in the province and this is supposed to be the launching pad of the ‘naya’ Pakistan. The contest was between the Jamaat-e-Islami and Awami National Party candidates. The JI candidate won the seat won that had fallen vacant when the party’s amir, Sirajul Haq, was elected senator in March.
Now, the main feature of the election was the total absence of women from polling booths. Not one woman out of the 47,280 names on the electoral lists showed up on any of the 85 polling stations. Even if there was no irregularity in the polling that took place, would this election legitimately be considered free and fair in the context of what democracy actually means?
So far as I know, this serious dereliction has not created much stir in the political circles. No one staged a ‘dharna’ to protest that the planned absence of half the population of the constituency from the polling is also rigging. It amounts to disenfranchisement of women. This was surely not the first time that women had not voted in some areas of the province. We can be sure that this was the result of a tacit understanding between the candidates and the parties.
One question that worries me is that if successive elections have not been able to dent the tribal and conservative patriarchal outlook of entire communities than what is the rationale for a democratic dispensation. After all, democracy is meant to empower the ordinary citizens and promote as well as protect individual freedoms. The main issue is social change.
The pity of it is that one of the two main candidates belonged to the ANP – a party that professedly is progressive and liberal. Here is one more suggestion that it is now reduced to an ethnic and regional entity. Even then, it must not condone the disgraceful act of not allowing the women to vote. The argument that the women stayed away voluntarily, without any exception, may be taken as comic relief in a grim situation. Is it a matter of national shame that five women of Pakistani origin have won elections to the House of Commons in Britain?
Anyhow, the status of women, particularly in the tribal and feudal domains that our democracy has not been able to influence, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the rigging of the Pakistani society. A more alarming indicator is the assassination of a number of defenders of human rights and the oppression of the spirit of artistic and literary creativity. The desertification of the Pakistani mind is something that threatens the very survival of this country.
When the specific election tribunal sent the federal railways minister home, the focus in the verdict was not on any planned rigging but on glaring irregularities and inefficiencies of the polling staff. This is instructive. I think that similar transgressions would be present, to a higher or lower extent, in almost all constituencies. With the existing levels of monetary and intellectual corruption, fortified by blatant incompetence, the bureaucratic structure that we have is inherently incapable of, among other things, holding the general elections. This is not to say that in some constituencies, candidates and parties did not indulge in extensive rigging. The bottom line, though, is a system that is broken. In other words, we do not have the ability, in a collective sense, to do anything right.
Look at how the ordinary lives are rigged in all their encounters with the administration. We have a government, with its majestic buildings and a show of pomp and power, that simply cannot run primary schools or hold public examinations. The managerial expertise of the legions of government servants is manifest in the performance of departments that deliver services. This week, Karachi has suffered a water crisis that reflects an entire range of fearful maladies.
One hears credible accounts of corruption that boggle the mind. For me, the quality of education, including in the private sector, is a larger threat to our future. In the health sector, too, you find intimations of disaster. Every day, we see sights and hear stories that challenge our feelings as a human being. But perhaps, as a defence mechanism, we have learnt to ignore this reality. Or we prefer to remain in denial.
Against this backdrop, how does society deal with a small number of individuals who feel committed to making a difference? We know the answer. The latest example is that of Sabeen Mahmud, who was gunned down in Karachi on April 24. Her death has rekindled the memory of another brave woman of Karachi who was struggling for social justice in her own way as a director of the Orangi Pilot Project. Parween Rahman was killed by unknown gunmen in March 2013. On Thursday, social activists observed the first death anniversary of Rashid Rehman, a human rights lawyer who was gunned down in his office in Multan.
We have other stories of courage and commitment to higher values of freedom and justice. There is, of course, Malala who has astonished the world with her passion for education. That she feels compelled to live abroad says a lot about how our society is rigged by bogus and brutish forces that stand in the way of a democratic dispensation.
I wonder if our leaders were able to look at The Economist of May 2. It devoted its obituary page, reserved for individuals of global importance, to our Sabeen. The title: ‘Karachi’s wild child’. It is a tribute to Pakistan’s potential for survival. But who will stop the elimination of such precious and brave human beings and create room for sanity and hope in this country?

The writer is a staff member. Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com