Politicians’ skewed approach to the issue
Politicians, they say, are a selfish lot. Unless their interests are affected, they won’t raise their voice much less lift a finger to change the status quo on an issue. The recent attempt by the parliamentarians in granting voting rights to expatriate Pakistanis has proven to be an example in how seriously flawed their manner of working is. They were in favour of the measure, making it their joint cause; however, they put it aside just as soon as the Supreme Court adjudicated that dual nationality holders couldn’t contest elections. It appeared as if they lost all the incentive in seeing the move through.
But that was not the only obstacle in the way of granting expatriates their right of voting. When the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) decided to go ahead with the move, other ministries, whose duty it was to come up with a solution that was cost effective yet practical, indulged in their usual red-tapeism and other delaying tactics, which incurred the wrath of the SC the other day when it ordered to do the needful or else the officers responsible would be sent home packing. The court also ordered to establish polling stations in embassies and asked the concerned ministries to jointly work out a methodology. The ministry of IT informed the court that it could provide the necessary software and technical support within a period of three days, which puts a serious question mark as to why the same ministry is not being allowed to go ahead with its proposal.
One could say that politicians’ selfishness has kept them from doing the needful. As it happened, when the politicians fought for the cause they were not doing it to please the whole expatriate community, they had another motive: they wanted to protect parliamentarians with dual nationalities along with helping the rich expatriates, who contributed handsomely to political parties, to ease their way into the country’s politics. The reason for this move the parliamentarians gave was that the expatriate Pakistanis lessen the impact of foreign exchange crunch through remittances. That is true but the spin given to the whole remittance scenario didn’t even mention where the bulk of remittances came from. Most of the dual nationality holders, who form only a minority of Pakistani expatriates, spend their incomes in the countries of their choice but it’s the honest workers who hold only Pakistani passports in the Gulf and other countries that send in the bulk of remittances. Still no one focused on providing them the right to vote. That’s how skewed parliamentarians’ approach was but with the SC bearing down on the ECP and other ministries, it is hoped that the entire spectrum of expatriates would be able to send in more than just remittances to their homeland.
