The minority millstone
By M.P. Bhandara
Bhandra : Anatomy of Phantom Democracy, Vote Banks, Bidding Wars, Ghost Voters and More Phantasmagoria ---JPR
dawn.com
WITH hopes of constitutional change in the air, women, minorities and other
disadvantaged people with the millstone of the Constitution's 8th Amendment
round their necks are all focusing on their respective agendas.
Uncle Tom, the MP can be traded at election time for the next highest bidder--JPR
One of Zia's awful legacies is separate electorates for minorities. On paper the
scheme looked simple, innocuous and even appealing. Under the 1973
Constitution joint franchise scheme, minorities were not elected to parliament
or assemblies but selected by the parliamentary groups of their respective
parties. The so-called elected minority member was thus beholden to the
majority party groups in parliament. No wonder, the majorities selected
minority members to Parliament who could be trusted to be submissive
weaklings, Uncle Toms, or predatory frontmen for those who were
responsible for their induction into parliament.
For some time before the 8th Amendment to the Constitution was passed by
parliament in 1985, I was President Zia-ul-Haq's adviser for minority affairs.
The thought of a direct election of minority members to parliament, as
opposed to the former system of selection, looked appealing and democratic
even though the electorate was restricted on a religious community basis: a
serious limitation.
However, having to run for parliament under this scheme soon changed my
mind. The election was wide open to fraud, manipulation, cheating and every
conceivable type of election abuse. This inconvenience, however, was minor
when compared to the problems faced by the voters themselves. Separate
electorates divided the population between "us" and "them." Religious
differences, formerly blurred, suddenly came into a sharp focus. A Christian
living in Quetta could no longer seek help from his local Muslim MNA, for his
parliamentary representative could well be a Christian from Sialkot or
Peshawar, with little or no concern or care for this voter from Quetta or
beyond.
Let me explain this complicated voting system through examples from my own
personal experience.
MP for minorities scattered all over pakistan--- Vote Banks for the highest bidder - JPR
Between 1985 and 1988 I was member of parliament representing five small
religious communities, viz. Sikhs, Buddhists, Bahais, Parsis and the Kalash of
Chitral. My constituency was the whole of Pakistan. The registered voter
population of this heterogeneous lot was only six or seven thousand persons -
scattered over a territory stretching from three near-inaccessible Kalash
valleys of Chitral, bordering on Afghanistan, which hold about 2000 Kalash
people, to the desert wastes of Jhal Magsi, Dera Bugti and the Tharparker in
Balochistan and Sindh, holding about 1,000 Sikh and Buddhist voters to the
recondite areas of Bahawalpur, Swat and small villages in the Frontier and
Punjab. And finally the urban centres of Lahore and Karachi where Parsis
mainly dwell.
As if, this diffuse geography was not a sufficient obstacle, as of the last general
election the area of this constituency was further broadened to include about
1,000 Sikhs living in the FATA, where Pakistani law does not even apply.
During the last election I tried to meet some Sikhs in the Bara Bazaar of
Khyber Agency but was advised to quit within 30 minutes or face the prospect
of being kidnapped. I was told that the time-honoured tradition in the tribal
areas is to sell votes to the highest bidder; I should either participate in the
bidding or get out.
The highest bidding candidate gets up to 142% of the votes - How is it possible? --JPR
Not surprisingly, the winning candidate got between 88 and 142% of the votes
in the tribal areas and in some agencies not a single abstention was registered.
The other candidates received no votes. And as if to emphasize the impunity of
this brazen fraud, in Kurrum Agency the number of registered voters was 78
whereas votes cast in favour of the winning candidate were 110 against 0 for
the rest.
Try filing a complaint to the Election Commissioner -Good luck-JPR
I can say from personal experience that bringing my complaint to the notice of
the Chief Election Commissioner's office is an exercise in futility. Even when
election fraud is palpable, the standard answer is "go to court, the election is
over", or, "we do not have the power or means to investigate the complaint."
Complain to the high Court - exercise in futility and frustration -JPR
And going to the High Court with an election petition is an even more
frustrating experience. On my election petition, notwithstanding over
twenty-five court hearing dates (with opposing counsel ever reluctant to
attend) and the passage of nearly two and a half years, the court had not
decided whether the petition was maintainable or not. I withdrew the petition
in sheer disgust.
Bizzarre As bizzare can be - Quadainai and Ahmadias Boycott elections---JPR
An election which may be aptly labelled as the most bizarre held anywhere in
the democratic or undemocratic world pertains to the Qadiani election to the
National and Provincial Assemblies. Strangest, because the bona fide
electorate of this community, to a man, refuses to take part in this election.
Qadianis/Ahmadis refuse to recognize their non-Muslim status and therefore
have boycotted all elections. Indeed, the governing body of this tightly knit
community has decided: expel from the community persons defying the
decision.
VoteBank owned and sold to the highest bidder -JPR
But politics does not recognize a vacuum: an ongoing fraud fills the space. A
certain Lahore Haji, well known for his "piety", has put together and registered
a virtual body of impostor Qadiani voters, said to be permanently on his
payroll, ready to do his bidding at election time. He therefore "owns" one
National Assembly and three Provincial Assembly members. Since these
members are independent - free from party affiliations - the commercial value
of these human assets is enormous. Huge cash dividends were raked in by this
Haji whenever governments were to be made or unmade in the recent past or,
best of all, during the Senate elections.
Haji manipulates diffuse minority votes; Election Commission turns a blind eye-JPR
In addition to the Qadiani seats, this Haji also manipulates the elections of the
seats reserved for Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis and at least one Christian seat
in Punjab and Sindh respectively. This election entrepreneur has tentacles
spread widely in various institutions of the state. The matter is well within the
knowledge of the Election Commission, but this sterile body, usually headed
by septuagenarians, turns a blind eye.
For the minority citizens of Pakistan the system of separate electorates is a
millstone round their necks. It corresponds to the ultimate version of an
anti-Jinnah Pakistan which believes in forms of medieval theocratic governance
instead of the spirit of human liberation that originally informed Islam.
A possible solution to the vexed and emotionally charged problem of joint or
separate electorates and to the larger question of election corruption in general
points in the direction of the proportional representation (PR) system of
election now prevailing in many countries.
Under this system an individual votes for a party. The party submits a list of
candidates equal to the number of seats being contested to the election
committee before the polls. A law should be promulgated and enacted to
ensure that at least every seventh slot of this list is allotted to a woman
candidate and every 14th slot to a minority representative. So if a political
party wins, say, 100 seats in parliament there will be at least 14 women
members and 7 minority members from that party within the legislature.
PR, like any other electoral system, has serious limitations. But, apart from the
many merits or demerits of this system, in our set-up it neatly avoids the
emotionally charged question relating to joint or separate electorates and the
problems of adequate women and minority representation in the legislatures.
The singular advantage of the PR system is that it affords a better opportunity
to persons without means to get elected to parliament. All our parliaments
since 1972 have been dominated by feudal grandees. PR is more likely to
bring in dedicated party workers, academics and persons from the arts and
business world into parliament.
The main disadvantage of this system is that the nexus between voter and
parliamentary representative is lost. This objection is formidable but more true
in the western countries than in ours, for our parliamentary worthies are
seldom accessible to their voters.
As the PR prospect will be least welcome to our old election horses, to pacify
them perhaps the present system of first-past-the-post may continue for the
Senate elections - which at present are the hottest single bed of corruption in
Pakistan. It is well known that the cost of a single provincial assembly vote for
the Senate election is in millions of rupees.
Three cheers for democracy but certainly no cheer for the present bogus one. |
