The best way forward
The PPP and ANP have accepted their defeat and vowed to continue to work within the system. Former prime minister and PPP vice-president Yusuf Raza Gilani has gone a step further by accepting the responsibility for the Party’s poor performance in the elections. So has the PPP Punjab president, Mian Manzoor Wattoo. Both have subsequently resigned from their party offices also. Aitzaz Ahsan, another top PPP leader, has sent his resignation from the Senate to President Zardari. Not that everyone resigning was satisfied with the way elections were conducted in a number of constituencies. According to Aitzaz Ahsan, voting results were bizarre as some polling stations had recorded a 150 percent voter turnout. Results announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) should be reviewed, he added. This is a commendable way of registering one’s protest
Initially Imran Khan had also thanked the PTI workers for their efforts and told them that winning and losing was part of the game. He had condemned the alleged rigging in Karachi and vowed to issue a white paper “to indicate flaws in the balloting process”. But as more and more reports of avowed mismanagement of the polls emerged, his stance hardened. Imran Khan said that the party had collected evidence of rigging in 25 constituencies of the National Assembly, asking the ECP to look into the complaints. One can understand that the youth often react emotionally to setbacks as could be seen from the rallies and sit-ins they have held over the last few days in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. What was worrying was that the PTI leadership, which one expected to behave coolly, was also exhorting them to continue the protests and turn Lalik Jan Chowk into another Tahrir Square. But better sense has prevailed, at least in Lahore, as Hamid Khan and other PTI leaders have announced to end sit-ins, instead of taking them to the whole of Punjab as they had announced earlier. Equally disturbing is the demand to hold re-elections in constituencies under dispute with the army supervising it – a case in point is the NA 250 where it has been decided that the army will supervise the re-election. This amounts to bypassing the ECP. What is needed is to improve the working of the institutions instead of rejecting it in favour of extra constitutional arrangements.
The best way for the PTI is to call off protests and approach the ECP with evidence of misconduct or rigging, which it seems it is paying heed to. The ECP needs to take into account all complaints of serious nature concerning elections in Karachi, Lahore or elsewhere. The Commission has to realise that the complaints have not emanated only from political parties but also from foreign observers and civil society organisations like the FAFEN and the HRCP. It is disturbing to be informed that at 120 polling stations at least the turnout was more than 100 percent while at some others it crossed 300 percent. One expects it from the Chief Election Commissioner that he will not allow the bureaucracy under him to suppress the facts in an attempt at face saving.
