The Joke that is Poll Scrutiny

On 2nd April, I was reading Dawn Newspaper when my eyes fell upon this headline:

“Poll Scrutiny turns into an Islamic Studies Test”

And then of course we all heard about how veteran and brilliant columnist, Ayaz Amir's application was turned down by the returning officer because in the past his articles have been accused of being against the "ideology of Pakistan".

Word is that ECP officials are employing “ruthless scrutiny” measures for properly screening the candidates. Candidates from different parties are being asked questions about Islamic injunctions, and upon failure to properly answer; the returning officers are rejecting  candidates applications thus enjoying their five minutes of media fame.

In order to grasp the sheer foolishness of such a process, let us run through this small mental exercise:

Suppose a candidate from an XYZ political party having degrees in civil engineering, town planning etc from prestigious universities around the globe, and who plans to introduce many changes in his constituency if elected as an MNA, presents his credentials to the ECP returning officer, who checks the documents. The returning officer , let’s assume, asks him to recite ‘Ayat-ul-Qursi’ , and let us suppose that the candidate doesn’t know it, and just on that basis the returning officer dismisses  the candidate’s  application. Degrees, aims and objectives, plans and policies be damned.

So now, those degrees, credentials and professional experiences are irrelevant, because the ECP official has to be satisfied that the candidate has necessary knowledge of Islam rather than governance to become Member of Parliament according to Articles 62 and 63.

After such a ‘Zia-esque’ demonstration of electoral scrutiny, I am guessing that the said ECP officials somehow time traveled from the good old’ Islamist 80s into 2013.

Thankfully, the political parties also have taken issue with these practices and ANP’s Mr. Bashir Jan was quite right in saying that “One can’t reject an honest and upright candidate just because he has not learnt any Quranic verse by heart”.

In the recent years, much has been written over the utter pointlessness of articles 62 and 63 and to summarize various commentaries, the contents of these articles are mostly vague and terms like “good character” ,“abstains from sins” etc can be easily slanted to serve one’s own purpose.  It would be highly irrational to even presume that 90% of parliamentarians have never indulged in major sins and I have not even begun commenting on 63-G (defaming judiciary) as politicians in the past and present have been guilty of indulging in it with relish.

The main point that can be gleaned from such articles in our constitution is that though the political parties are proposing to launch many projects and reform initiatives, one key reform that all parties have overlooked is the constitutional reform. It is irrational to build a tall building if the structure on which you plan to erect the building is corroded and fragile.  No reform, no policies in Pakistan can succeed unless and until structural changes in our constitution are made. Abnormalities like the Blasphemy laws, parallel judicial system (Federal Shariat Court), Articles 62-63, 203, are glaring examples. 

Thus before attempting to screen candidates, the ECP, respected lawmakers and upholders of those laws should revisit Quaid-eAzam’s oft quoted (and oft forgotten) excerpt from his 11th August 1947 speech:

“… You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State...”

Sadly, we have mixed religion with the business of the state and evolved into the exact anti-thesis of what the Quaid preached on 11th August 1947. Hence, now it has become more important to remember Quranic verses then to have proper educational and professional credentials. This has to end.

PS: On Ayaz Amir's case I shall just say  as  epigrammaticaly as possible:

There never was an Ideology of Pakistan. The  closest thing that we had near to an ideology died on the streets of Dhaka on December 1971, so don't kid us.

Not every revolutionary situation leads to a Revolution

Elections 2013 are coming closer, most probably in April, as the current Assembly will be dissolved after completing its five-year term in March 2013 (hopefully).  If it does, we might as well have the first democratically elected government to have survived its full five-year term. Strangely, it is a proud and yet an embarrassing feeling to have finally achieved the holy grail of surviving a full term without any army intervention (so to speak) in our 65 years of existence on the world map.

Politics is in the air and not a single day passes when my Twitter and Facebook timelines are not swamped by political debates. Though I do not purport to be an elections expert as there are already enough out there without me stepping into the fray, I will make an effort to present my thoughts about the elections from a layman voter’s perspective.

Lenin once said that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation. So is there such a situation in Pakistan. These elections are being heralded as harbingers of change-positive change i.e. But are they really?

PTI, PMLN, PPP, MQM, ANP are all, promising to usher Pakistan into a new era of prosperity. To me, after the nightmare 2008-2013 period nothing that comes from PPP should be taken at face value, well at least I will not take it. But despite all its failings – and those are some pretty gigantic failings- PPP still has support in Southern Punjab and  Sind, even though its popularity in interior Sind is waning, courtesy bad governance. While PMLN, ANP and MQM are squabbling over their respective regions, what Pakistan truly wants right now is a national party. Supporters of PTI will disagree with me as they will cite successful rallies in the four provincial capitals of Pakistan as proof of support, but rallies do not automatically translate into votes and despite claims, PTI is focusing to get seats in Punjab as it does not have enough “electables” to be a serious contender in three other provinces.  We can call PPP, the ghost of a national party it once was but now it cannot form a government without coalition support in Baluchistan, KPK, Karachi and Southern Punjab.

Since no party right now can claim to be a truly national party, what they are doing is squabbling over and exploiting, biradri, sectarian and ethnic votes. Policies and plans have been left over to be argued on social media and Talk shows, none of which, in all sincerity, will affect the opinion of the general voter populace much. The main body of voters resides in rural areas and is too hard pressed in their daily struggle of lives to really give a thought to the various economic and educational plans put forth by the political parties.

Hence, hunting for electables in constituencies is the main strategy of parties right now, policies and issues be damned.  This is the sad reality of Pakistani politics. Every election in this country has been called as a change but has the change ever come? Every single government in this country’s 65-year existence is a case study in bad governance and indecisive character. And, expect this trend to continue unless one thing happens. Spread of Education.

In my opinion, it all comes down to education when we are choosing which political party will be leading our country for the next five years. Like I said before, we are still quagmired in ethnic, biradri, sectarian and favor asking politics and all this is because our general ‘awam’ is not educated enough to really question the manifestos and economic recovery plans of political parties nor are they really empowered to vote freely.

Talking about published plans by political parties, they really haven’t evolved from being simple idealistic statements to implementable objective plans with checks and balances because quite honestly they don’t need to.

When 70% of our prodigal parliamentarians don’t even pay taxes and at least 60% of whom we will be seeing in the next assembly, how can you expect major changes? The general Pakistani population is too busy in making their ends meet to really go out into the streets to protest or to go in courts to sue their respective MNAs and MPAs and thus this issue will soon fizzle out into nothingness and will not affect the outcome of elections in possible sense, which really tells us something about how the voters will be marking their ballot in the upcoming elections.

So if you ask me if the next elections would bring anything new to Pakistan, will any positive change be coming, all I can do is to re quote Lenin, “…..not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution”.