Punjabi wins in Punjab and a Pastun in KPK -- Ghinwa Bhutto has a an excellent article in the Op/ed section of the News, I will present below -- but before that, it's important to understand how the idea or concept of Tabdeeli and Naya Pakistan are presented in the media now -- Tabdeei and Naya Pakistan's core idea is "CHANGE", and in Pakistan this idea of CHANGE is seen by influential gups, exactly in opposite terms, to some it is a POSITIVE, they are persuaded that Change will empower them a lead to a better Pakistan, there is another element, represented by the likes of the PNL-N and PPP, who view change as anathema, as something to be avoided at all costs:
De-mock-racy
Ghinwa Bhutto
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Stalin famously said "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
Those of us who do not identify as Stalinists believe that in a democracy the fundamental value of polls is to decentralise the arbitrary patronage of the powerful and expand the voices heard in the political realm. In a democracy the job of decentralising patronage belongs solely to the public.
Democracy is supposed to shorten the chain of command between the people and the state. By having the authority to levy and collect taxes, spend on development, protect life and property and dispense justice people become empowered. They have the authority to remove those who fail in their duties of fairly and transparently expending resources and protecting the public.
Unfortunately, this contractual relationship between the people and the state does not exist in Pakistan. The existing social contract is between the state, represented by the military and civil bureaucracy, on the one hand and feudals, industrialists, and the moneyed class on the other. Since 1947, patronage has been strictly limited to these ruling classes who allow almost no alternatives and who co-opt the apparatus of the state to restrict the publics ability to seek justice. Without the police, the courts and the support of the bureaucracy the feudal in the interior or the industrialist in the city has no real power of patronage.
Thus in every elections, the military and civil administration, including the judiciary, all come together to protect the patronage of this ruling class over the resources of the state and consequently over the people. As long as elections serve to restrict patronage rather than expand it, the Pakistani state will always be happy to hold them.
In a devolved system of power, citizens have the right to elect representatives at the union council level mayors, deputy mayors, labour leaders etc and at the provincial and national levels. In such a system, these officials are empowered by the people and thus totally accountable to an electorate that has the ability not only to select them, but also hold them to the highest standard of governance. The Pakistani citizen at the moment only has the right to select provincial and national representatives, who answer only to the bureaucracy and not to the people. These two representatives are not chosen freely or fairly but under violent intimidation, bribery and the shadow of massive rigging.
The 2013 elections demonstrated that the Pakistani state works in tandem to ensure that the status quo prevails and that patronage, contrary to peoples hopes, would not be expanded to new leaders. When a political party comes to power and fails to give the people what they promised, they are at fault. But when the sum of state machinery the courts, the law-enforcement agencies and the civil and military bureaucracy plays a collaborative role in bringing that party back to power by actively engaging in rigging and intimidation, then the blame rests with the entirety of the state.
In every polling station presiding officers and returning officers are designated as neutral observers. In reality there is nothing neutral about them. They are government teachers hired by the incumbent government to cheat. The auditor generals report for 2010-11 found that the provincial government was guilty of a massive number of fake appointments, even hiring under-age recruits who were otherwise ineligible for service.
During elections it is these teachers tasked with educating our children who tear out polling lists, stuff ballot boxes, intimidate and threaten dissenting voters and steal votes for the party that hires them.
There werent even judges to be found who could shut down polling stations indulging in rigging. At Government Primary school Old Nazzar Larkana polling station I came across a returning officer sitting on a pile of torn out sheets from the voters list book. All around her were women who already had blue thumbs and ink drawn on their fingers lining up to vote for the umpteenth time. I asked the returning officer supervising this rigging for her name and she replied main be naam hoon (I have no name).
On any day of the year, our police are busy protecting criminals and thieves. On election day, they work even harder. In Naushero Feroz the police surrounded a bank-turned-polling-station so that the ballot thumping inside would not be disturbed by the angry crowd gathering outside. In many countries even in India the local police are not allowed to participate in elections in any official capacity whatsoever.
In those countries paramilitary and military forces are deputed to ensure a peaceful environment. But how can the citizens of Karachi vote peacefully under the Kalashnikovs of those Rangers who have launched armed operations in the city for decades?
I have contested three elections and campaigned in many others. I have not won any of them, but luckily I subscribe to Alai Stevensons philosophy: Im not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.
But never before have I witnessed the brutality and violence that I had to see during these elections. Complaints of excessive force and violence were not only levelled against the police and the Rangers but also against the army. Polling agents were threatened and voters and candidates, myself included, fired at.
How does the ordinary citizen seek protection? If not from the police, or the army, then from whom?
Alongside the states obstructions, the medias absence was also noticeable. While news channels did not stop their television coverage for even ten minutes on election day, neither their cameras nor their intrepid reporters were anywhere to be found in large swaths of Pakistans rural areas.
The reason Pakistan continues to recycle the same ruling elites over and over again regardless of the wishes of its people is because the electorate does not have the chance to redistribute political patronage. Only when power is decentralised will elections hold any significance in this country. Until then, they will continue to be a violent and unworthy charade.
The writer is the chairperson of PPP-Shaheed Bhutto.