Only losers want it

AT PENPOINT

Now that the Daska by-election re-polling has been conducted, the series of by-elections to three provincial assemblies and the National Assembly, elections to the Senate and the election of the Senate Chairman and Deputy Chairman, are all finally over, yet by-elections are not yet over. The election of Faisal Vawda to the Senate created a vacancy on NA 249 in Karachi, which will be filled on April 29, while the death of an MPA has created a vacancy on PS 70 in Badin, to be filled on May 20.

Thus Prime Minister Imran Khan’s desire for electoral reforms may be described as delayed, but it is certainly not misplaced. Also, the ruling PTI made its mark in national politics by calling for electoral reforms, so it makes sense for electoral reforms to be brought back on the agenda.

However, there is a problem with electoral reforms. Those who call for them are those who have lost elections, and hope to get better results through those reforms. If they get around to winning, taking power and getting in a position where they can carry out electoral reforms, then that will only happen because they mastered the bad old unreformed system. Their mastery of the unreformed system will be imperfect, but it will be enough to create an internal lobby in favour of the old system, and against reform.

Imran seems to be following that pattern, and his talk of electoral reform is focused on the Senate elections, where he suffered an unforeseen setback, in the shape of the defeat of Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh. The solution he has come up with is electronic voting machines, as they have in India.

While Parliament remains sovereign, its legislative competence over elections creates doubts, because unlike the ECP, the government is concerned more with winning than the fairness to the election. To be fair to the PTI, it should be said that this is the case with all politicians.

The next Senate election will not take place until March 2024, when there will have been a general election (by 2023). However, before those are held, the next local body elections will take place, where it is possible that any new reforms might be implemented. The fate of those elections will help determine how serious the PTI is about electoral reform. During the 2018 election campaign, the PTI had said that local councils were the nurseries of politics, but elections have not been held, because the PTI has not been able to notify the results of the 2017 census. The Election Commission of Pakistan has refused to hold local body polls, because the new local body polls require fresh demarcation of constituencies according to the new census.

That census cannot be used, until it is formally notified. The last general election could only be held according to delimitations under the new census, because the outgoing Parliament amended the Constitution to allow for fresh delimitations according to the provisional census results.

In fact, the delay in converting the provisional results into permanent notified ones will cause problems for the next general election, because if they have not been notified at that point, the present delimitations will become illegal. Actually, once the results are notified, there may have to be a fresh delimitation, but the ECP may merely have to re-notify the existing delimitations.

Why is this extremely crucial step not being taken? It is because there have been claims of under-counting by both the MQM and the PPP. The MQM has also claimed double-counting, as people were counted at both Karachi and in their home province, with the result that their home province’s population was exaggerated. The PTI has been unable to persuade the MQM to withdraw its objections, even though it is an ally. Because of this, the Sindh Government continues to press its objection. Actually, it seems that both the parties are engaged in a competition with each other, though the country as a whole might end up a loser.

The Council of Common Interests has voted in favour of notifying the results, with Sindh continuing its objections to the last. The CCI also decided on a fresh census in October, which would actually regularise the census, bringing them back to the pre-1961 decennial pattern. It may also be remembered that the previous census was held several years late. It might also provide the PTI the chance to claim that it would carry out an acceptable survey, as opposed to the one carried out by the PML(N).

Another issue that seems to have influenced Imran is that his party has lost all recent by-elections. One response has been to ask the entire ECP to resign, a demand which may be aimed at the foreign-funding case, from which the takeaway has been that the PTI would not like its foreign donors to become known. The support he has expressed for Electronic Voting Machines.

There are two major problems with EVMs. First is cost. To hold a general election using EVMs would require a ballpark figure of Rs 80 billion. EVMs reduce the amount of paper needed, and thus lead to huge savings, but mobilising the money needed would be a major headache. Then there is the issue of reliability. International experience indicates that the technology is relatively reliable, but not entirely foolproof.

It must not be forgotten that the Daska repoll was ordered because of irregularities in the original poll. There was not enough investigation of who was responsible, or of the mechanisms that were used. The possibility exists that previous elections were subject to the same kind of interference. It is to be assumed that the repolling was free of that interference, but there is no certainty that these methods will not be used in a general election. The methods have not been identified, and thus may be used again.

Apart from the expense, the possibility of EVMs being misused cannot be ruled out. They also create additional credibility problems for the ECP, which will probably find that the EVMs would be made one of the grounds for the challenging of election results by the losers. The situation will become even more complicated if EVMs are used in local body polls.

It should not be forgotten that election technology advances merely promote riggers to invent new methods. Similarly, it is to be expected that EVMs will prompt candidates, and their supporters, to find new methods. These methods will be tried out at the local council level, and then at the provincial or national level.

While Parliament remains sovereign, its legislative competence over elections creates doubts, because unlike the ECP, the government is concerned more with winning than the fairness to the election. To be fair to the PTI, it should be said that this is the case with all politicians. The only winner in recent years to protest about the fairness of the poll was Donald Trump in 2016, probably because he saw in the result the factors that would lead to his losing his re-election bid, as he did. And even he did not protest too much. They never do.