AT PENPOINT
For once, the PTI has got the government on the backfoot, on the matter of elections to the two dissolved provincial assemblies. Indeed, it seems that these two elections are all that Imran Khan is going to get, and there will be no early dissolution of the National Assembly. With the elections due in November anyway, it now seems that there will be no incentive, even for the PTI, to have early elections.
The path to elections on time is full of obstacles, but if the provincial elections can be put off, then so can federal. By having two provincial elections held beforehand, the holding of national elections on time is buttressed.
It should be noted that the reasons being given are not the reason why the government would like to void elections: it fears that it will be thrashed soundly. However that is not why it says it would like to avoid elections. There are two main reasons given: the upsurge of terrorism, and the state of the economy.
On the face of it, terrorism is going to be a major problem. It should be noted that the upsurge of terrorism is taking place in KP, which has one of the assemblies to be elected. However, the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan has carried out its activities in Lahore too, apart from other Punjab cities. That means that while the focus of the TTP will be on KP elections, Punjab Assembly elections cannot be ignored.
Elections are vulnerable for two reasons. First, electioneering naturally tends to mass gatherings. A lot of electioneering is safe enough, such as door-to-door canvassing or media advertising, but rallies, even corner meetings, bring together large numbers of people and pack them into a relatively small space. That is ideal for terrorists.
Second, if a candidate dies, the poll is countermanded. That constituency does not vote on polling day, but on some day later, to be decided by the Election Commission of Pakistan. Usually, any such countermanded seats are clubbed with those to which by-elections are being held, because of seats to which multiple winners vacated. That means that terrorists will do their best to sabotage polls by killing candidates.
No election so far has been disrupted by this particular method. Still, KP saw the assassination of Bashir Ahmad Bilour in December 2012. Bilour was the province’s Senior Minister and a leading figure in the ANP. In the subsequent 2013 campaign, the ANP complained that its candidates could not campaign freely. However, the polls were not postponed.
There is no excuse for postponing an election. Elections are the essence of democracy. Even when Martial Law was imposed, the dictators had to hold elections. Those elections may be criticized, but elections must be held. Governments might want to avoid them, but they cannot be avoided forever.
The Defence Ministry has refused to place at the disposal of the ECP military or paramilitary forces needed for security in the March 16 by-elections. One of the reasons it gave was that the troops were needed because of the present wave of terrorism. The ECP was also rebuffed by the Lahore High Court, to which it wrote asking that it provide judicial officers under its supervision for assignment as returning officers. Interestingly, the reason given was not that the LHC wished to observe the constitutionally mandated separation of the judiciary and the executive, but that there was a high case pendency which the lending of judicial officers for election duties would affect.
The Finance Ministry did not mince words while refusing the ECP the money it needed to conduct the elections, citing an economic crunch. It not only refused the Rs 20 billion needed for the 93 by-elections consequent upon the acceptance of the PTI resignations, but the Rs 14 billion extra needed to hold the Punjab and KP polls separately.
The ECP is thus being asked to hold free and fair elections without money or security. Yet, at the same time, it is being told by the LHC that it must hold the provincial elections on time. The LHC has not explained in its order how the ECP can conduct polls without returning officers.
A date for elections must be set by the Governor, and the ECP must determine an Election Programme for each constituency, which determines the dates on which particular activities are to be held, starting with when candidates can obtain nomination papers, and ending with the display of the final list of candidates and their symbols. After the 28 days allowed for campaigning, voting is supposed to take place (provided one person has not been elected unopposed). However, for each constituency, there is supposed to be a returning officer, whose appointment as such must be notified 60 days before the poll. If the Punjab Assembly polls are not to go beyond 14 April, when the constitutionally 90 days will be over, returning officers must be appointed by 13 February. That date is 17 February for the KP Assembly.
There are other dates working against holding the poll on time. First there is the unknown Ramazan factor. Ramazan starts around March 23, and Eidul Fitr takes place around April22 (subject to the sighting of the moon). However, that means not only does the polling take place in the middle of Ramazan, but the latter half of the campaign does too. The only thing worse is for the polling to take place on Eid itself. However, it should not be forgotten that the last general election was held on 25 July 2018, in obedience to the schedule prescribed by the Constitution, and flying in the face of the conventional wisdom, which says that elections must not held in either the dry hot weather that starts in April, or the monsoon, which starts in July. As a matter of fact, if elections are held on time, they would come just as the heat begins to pick up. Another factor which has not been considered is that the elections would come just before Eid, which is itself before one of the biggest events in both Punjab and KP, the annual wheat harvest.
The second significant date is March 1, when the census will begin. From a strictly statistical point of view, the census was not required, the last one being conducted in 2017. However, that census left the MQM unhappy, and one off its conditions for switching to the PDM was the conduct of a fresh census. It had wanted a forensic audit of the previous one, but that did not happen. One advantage of this census is that it will bring Pakistan back to its schedule.
One disadvantage is that, assuming timely provincial polls, is that the census results will be coming out around the time that polling takes place.
It must be noted that this is the first electronic census, which means that results will become available earlier. The interprovincial allocation of seats depends on the census, which means that, provided elections are held on time, there will barely be enough time for the elections to be held after the necessary delimitations are conducted by the ECP.
More relevant is the fact that intraprovincial seat allocations are determined by the census, meaning that elections will be held according to the old delimitations, when fresh delimitations are needed. Even if a district has the same number of seats as before, internal population shifts may cause constituency boundaries to be changed.
The census also has to be notified, though the previous census was not notified at the time of the last election, and a constitutional amendment had to be passed so that the election was conducted on the basis of the provisional result.
There is a rather dangerous precedent to guide the ECP, set under this government, where it simply ignored the order of the Islamabad High Court to conduct the Islamabad local body election. It had put off the poll because it wanted to delimit the district afresh in the light of fresh legislation.
There is no excuse for postponing an election. Elections are the essence of democracy. Even when Martial Law was imposed, the dictators had to hold elections. Those elections may be criticized, but elections must be held. Governments might want to avoid them, but they cannot be avoided forever.
