The first democratic elections that this writer witnessed were in Britain during the late 1960s. Some young campaign workers from the British Communist Party knocked on the door of my Earl’s Court flat and informed me that I, as a citizen of a Commonwealth country, was entitled to vote in the general elections. Since their particular Party did not have a candidate in my constituency, they hoped I would vote for Labour and oppose the racist Tories (those were the days when Enoch Powell was on the rise). Of course, Kensington was such a true-blue Tory stronghold that my vote would be wasted anyhow. But the fact of my vote being sought at all, and that my opinion was significant, were stimulating.
There was, of course, no uncertainty about the elections being held on time or of the results being disputed. Heading now into my eleventh elections in Pakistan, one continually hears the refrain: Will the elections be held? This refrain has been heard prior to most general elections, even the very first one in 1970, and most results have been – in one way or the other – disputed.
Fatima Jinnah campaigns for elections
But let us wind the clock back to even before 1970. Those of us who endorse democracy and government by consent of the people (including, of course, this writer) are wont to claim that the foundations of Pakistan are embedded in democratic values. Our independent statehood — as we continually point out to supporters of the military-bureaucratic autocracies that have too frequently ruled us — is the product of the exercise of the will of the Muslim masses of undivided India, as expressed in the Indian elections of 1946.
However, let’s face a couple of facts. The first is that the specific choice, of whether or not there should be a separate state of Pakistan, was never explicitly offered to the voters, who were in fact electing members of Provincial Assemblies that would, in turn, choose the members of a Constituent Assembly for an undivided India. Secondly, the ‘masses’ had no part in the election anyhow since the electorate was a limited one, with only those who met certain criteria of education, property ownership or payment of taxes/revenues being franchised and no voting rights whatsoever for the people of the princely states.
Did the people, then, actually exercise a democratic ‘choice’ in 1946? History shows that, yes, they did in fact vote. With their feet. With their passions. With their very lives. But that is beside the point here.
In the new state of Pakistan, the first time the people’s will was expressed was in 1949 in the province of Punjab, where the same kind of restricted franchise voted out the ‘old’ Muslim League faction headed by Nawab Iftikhar Hussain Mamdot and voted in the ‘young’ faction headed by Mian Mumtaz Daultana. A broader, but still not universal, franchise exercised its voting rights in 1954 in the former East Pakistan. Here, in the only Pakistan province that had seen Muslim League majorities since 1937, the opposition Jugto (‘United’) Front achieved a massive victory, reducing the League to a rump opposition of only eight Provincial Assembly seats.
Each and every election, direct or indirect, rigged or honest, has in some way or the other surprised the Establishment of the time
In 1962, under the self-appointed Field Marshall’s dispensation, the heavy-handed Nawab of Kalabagh helped to conduct the first national level general elections. But these were only indirect elections, to an electoral college of 80,000 ‘Basic Democrats’. There was reduced representation of the country’s East Wing. And no political parties. The resulting majorities for the Field Marshal’s supporters from this kind of massive ‘pre-poll rigging’ were scarcely surprising — even the Leader of the Opposition was his elder brother. But, here and there, a number of the erstwhile politicians consistently derided by the regime, mostly from the East Wing, were unexpectedly returned to the Assembly.
Hoping to strengthen his hold, the Field Marshal formed his own “King’s Party” and ordered another general election, of the same indirect kind, at the end of 1964. The unexpected candidature of Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah directly against him discomfited Ayub’s regime and he was obliged to indulge in the most blatantly obvious rigging to ensure his own victory.
The first true General Elections, in 1970, need not be commented on here, other than to say that the vote was uncompromisingly anti-Establishment. As regards the 1977 elections, with the opposition claiming rigging in their aftermath, massive urban uprisings took place, which unsettled the PPP government and brought in the black Zia years. The shamelessly biased electoral rules of Zia’s 1985 elections produced, to everyone’s surprise, the relatively gentlemanly Junejo government. And then came the four quick elections of 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1996. Each of these is believed to have been rigged, admittedly so in 1991, but no public protests followed. As regards the shameless orgy of gerrymandering, blatant manipulation and outright rigging over which the Musharraf regime presided in 2002, the less said the better. Under the ‘Reign of Errors’ of this fist waving mediocre, the violent insurgency in the north achieved enormous successes and violence and terror, originally unleashed by the policies of Zia-ul-Haq brought our cities to a fearful standstill.
General Musharraf during the 2002 elections
The 2008 elections, following the terrible tragedy of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, failed to produce a clear majority for her erstwhile Party, but raised the curtain on the present democratic interlude. Presiding over an opportunistic and allegedly kleptocratic coalition, her widower-husband considered it a significant enough achievement to have managed to drag the parliament through its full term, albeit sacrificing a Prime Minister along the way.
The 2013 elections managed to be held on schedule, despite the general environment of rampant terrorism that particularly effected candidates from the liberal-left side of the spectrum. The hyperactive (at least in parts of Punjab) government that came to power in 2013 had to first face the Dharnas that questioned its legitimacy and since then, according to its own narrative, is being acted against by the Establishment.
In all these elections over the years, two points do emerge. The first is that each and every election, direct or indirect, rigged or honest, has in some way or the other surprised the Establishment of the time or it has seen rigging and outright Establishment chicanery. The only time that people actually took to the streets in protest was in 1977 and, as is now commonly believed, this agitation was merely part of a plan to bring in the military that may have been foreign inspired.
And now we come to today and the general elections that are less than two months away. Are they offering any real choices? Despite all the talk of a ‘New Pakistan’, there are no real programmatic differences on offer. It does not matter if Tweedle-Dee Sharif, or Tweedle-Dumb Khan, or Tweedle-Wheedle Zardari comes to power. All, in one way or the other, represent the powerful elite seizure of the nation’s economic and political resources. That these are contended for by the military-bureaucratic-judicial Babu elite, changes nothing as far as we mere citizens are concerned. On the other side, but within the broader rules, are the ultra-right mediaevalists who at least speak in anti-elite terms. Beyond them, despite repeated (and successful) anti-insurgent military campaigns, the anti-terrorist Radd-ul-Fassad, the National Action Plan, and now the NISP, there remains the critical challenge of the armed men still lurking in the mountains and in our cities, whose ‘cause’ also derives impetus from anti-elite passions.
