Undeterred from its objective
Elections in Pakistan are a rare and unique commodity, one that given a chance could have an impact on the country’s political landscape in a positive way, but as with many other things this democratic tradition has been pushed down to give space to machinations of highest order. However, now that the situation is not that drastic anymore, with a democratic government gearing up to hand over the setup to another government of the sort, things are looking up and there is a real chance the elections might deliver what they were supposed to in the first place: a peaceful political change in the government.
The Election Commission of Pakistan seems to be on a steady pace with its efforts in making this election a success. It has just announced the polling scheme which details how many polling stations, polling booths, and staff would be used this time around. Looking at the numbers alone, the effort seems to be gigantic with polling stations alone running above 70,000 in number and the staff being in hundreds of thousands. Two things that this announcement makes clear are the intentions of the ECP to go ahead with the elections come what may, and that it is confident it can execute its plan into practice. Whatever the rumour mill is churning out, the ECP appears to be in no mood for any monkey business. It has set itself a target and seems determined to make it.
But that would just be the one side of the story; another one involves the politicians who are all set to go to the public to ask them to depose their trust in them again, for better or for worse. Their eagerness to return to the power corridors, however, would be checked by the ECP and the electorate. One of the thorns in their side is the implementation of the articles 62 and 63, which though being controversial could be used in a much better sense to weed out the ones not worthy of holding any public office, let alone becoming representatives of the public. The implementation of the said articles could, however, be a challenging task. The ECP would be better if it does so in a way that doesn’t give any personal affront to the politicians while the end objective is achieved amicably.
Being the ruling party in the federal government, the PPP needs to announce election schedule as soon as possible for one particular purpose: it would quell any rumours of a delay in elections by making sure that the government is eager to walk the talk it has so often been making about transferring power to the next government.