- When the people have spoken…
Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a Latin proverb meaning, “The voice of the people is the voice of God”. It implies that the choice of the people is to be respected. With the approaching 2018 general elections in Pakistan, the proverb takes on greater significance. The vote is a sacred transaction between the masses and their leader and must be respected. There is a dire need to bring awareness among the masses about the sanctity of the vote. Owing to illiteracy, there has been a trend in past elections that political leaders resorted to bribing people into casting their vote for them for a fee. This practice must stop forthwith. Even for those people who cast their vote genuinely believing in the leadership qualities of a candidate, there must be an accountability process of living up to their promise of resolving various social issues. Unfortunately, the common practice has been that after being elected into office, the parliamentarian conveniently disregards the promises he or she made during the political campaign and gets involved in mundane affairs or feathering one’s own nest.
The voter should realise the importance of casting their vote in the ballot box of a deserving candidate. Especially those, who have participated in the past elections, when they approach their constituency asking for votes, they should be taken to task for not honouring their past pledges. The election commission of Pakistan is undertaking the onerous responsibility of educating the voter in the process of casting the vote: Where to go, how to check the voters’ list; inscribe their choice on the ballot paper, how to fold it and where to deposit it? It is equally imperative to apprise the voter regarding the importance of the vote. What is the significance and weightage of each vote? How the vote can affect the society, the constituency and even the country. Electing the wrong person, those with the track record of ignoring their voters or indulging in corruption, once reelected, will have the power of cheating the nation and desecrating the sacredness of the vote with impunity.
Candidates, who are also in the habit of changing their loyalties, must be rejected. After all if one is not sincere to a certain party, will also not be sincere to the voter. People going to the polls must be certain in their mind, whether they are casting their ballot in favour of an individual or the party and its manifesto of bringing improvements in the society.
Even the political leaders, who participate in the elections in Pakistan, generally lack the decorum or grace to accept defeat. They tend to cry foul and accuse of elections rigging
Election commission must ensure that the party manifesto of each political party has been publicised in a manner that it is discernible to the voter. Independent candidates too must draw up their agenda to convince the voter how they will benefit the society or constituency and what is their stance on various burning issues.
Respect of the voter is of paramount importance. People, who do not respect the voter, do not deserve their vote. There are leaders like the former head of the Pakistan Muslim League (N), Mian Nawaz Sharif, who was elected by his voters thrice to lead the country but each time he let them down. The last time, he was found being unfit to lead since he was not truthful and reliable. He is facing numerous charges of corruption, misappropriating public money and amassing wealth through dubious means. Once he got disqualified by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, instead of accepting the verdict gracefully, he chose to address his voters. The members of his political party, hired crowds to attend his rallies, where the deposed prime minister lamented that the sanctity of the vote had been desecrated by disqualifying an elected representative of Pakistan. Like clockwork toys, the rent-a-crowd participants of the political rally nodded in assent. They should have had the good sense to ask the unseated prime minister if he did not denigrate the masses by forsaking them and their genuine issues by indulging in corruption instead of serving them.
That leads us to another aspect of the Latin proverb quoted in the title. An early reference to the expression is in a letter from the monk and sage Alcuin to Charlemagne in 798. The full quotation from Alcuin reads: Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.
Its English translation according to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, third edition, Oxford University Press, 1993 is: “And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the stupidity of the crowd is always very close to madness.”
In fact, Alcuin used the fuller version of the phrase vox populi, vox Dei or The voice of the people is the voice of God in such a way to suggest that it was in fairly wide usage. The meaning grasped by this scribe is that rowdy crowds may in their fits of madness, be tempted to opt for wrong decisions swayed in their opinion by demagogues.
In such circumstances, especially pertaining to Pakistani society, where literacy rate is low and political acumen is limited, disastrous results can be obtained by blindly opting for the democratic process, where the greater number of votes cast matters.
Even the political leaders, who participate in the elections in Pakistan, generally lack the decorum or grace to accept defeat. They tend to cry foul and accuse of elections rigging. The election commission of Pakistan can preclude the chances of rigging by introducing biometric means of identifying the voter and electronic means of casting the vote. Even our eastern neighbour India has adopted electronic machines for polling thus removing even an iota of doubt regarding rigging.
Prior to the 2013 elections, while addressing a select group of analysts including this scribe, then Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani confided to us that he had recommended to the election commission to be permitted to acquire electronic voting machines but he was not granted permission. It is high time that such a modern and secure system of polling is adopted in Pakistan, where the environment is rife with rumours, suspicion and trust deficit.
One more aspect of the elections process must be to deter candidates from standing in the elections from more than one seat. This can be achieved by formulating a policy that any candidate, who is successful from more than one constituency, will bear the cost of bye-elections after surrendering his/her seat—post elections.
We pray that elections 2018 be safe, free and fair and the voters have the wisdom to cast their votes judiciously and may the correct candidates be elected to serve Pakistan with their sincere efforts.
