Something for other parties to learn from PTI
Whatever opinions other political parties might hold about PTI, they need to carefully study its intra party elections held on Sunday if they want to keep pace with the times. While conducting these elections is a mandatory requirement of the ECP, so far only Jamaat-i-Islami has held the exercise regularly. The JI being a small cadre party, holding the polls was no more than a cakewalk. But for a mass party like the PTI, whose 63,000 voters reportedly elected 500 federal capital party leaders on Sunday, it would have been nothing short of a challenge. The voting was conducted through a modern electronic system which was a novelty in Pakistan and ensured transparency. All registered members of the party, whose mobile numbers and CNIC numbers were already enlisted, were required to call any of the two UAN numbers and cast their votes through SMS. There were naturally unforeseen hitches. Some of the voters found the dedicated land lines blocked and mobile phone networks choked and had to turn up at the polling booths set up as an alternate arrangement. The PTI claims it has installed a mechanism allowing over seven million party voters to participate in the party elections to be completed by end of December or in early January. In case the experience succeeds, it could become a trendsetter.
Those who held the view that most of the youth who turn up at Imran Khan’s public meetings were non-serious youngsters from well-to-do families who might not vote for his candidates at the general elections would do well to revise their assessment. That thousands of CNIC bearing youth first made the effort to get themselves registered with the party and then stood in long queues at the polling stations indicates a fairly high level of enthusiasm. It was also noted by the media that instead of setting up the polling booths in posh areas only those localities were selected where there was a fairly good presence of the party voters.
There can be two opinions about the system under which only district level office bearers are to be elected directly while the main leadership would be chosen indirectly. But this is the first massive exercise in ensuring the enlisting of bona fide voters. The new system puts an end to the all too common malpractice on the part of rival party leaders at lower levels who enlisted bogus voters to strengthen their position inside the party. The new system should encourage members of other parties also to pressurise their leadership to hold inner party elections in a transparent way. The system no doubt is costly, but parties whose candidates can spend Rs30 million to Rs50 million to win a National Assembly seat should not find it difficult to employ It.
