Opinion

Do Elections Destroy Democracy? - 1
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA

“ It was not that I introduced new reforms in the system. In fact, I didn’t even add one comma, semicolon or a full stop to the Act of 1951(Indian Constitution, Section 77 which makes it compulsory for the candidates to keep an accurate account of their expenses, and which sets a ceiling on the amount they could spend on the campaign). Whatever was said in the Act, I just implemented it.” - T. N. Sessan, India’s 10 th Chief Election Commissioner - 1990-1996.

Politicians of Pakistan have a tendency to grow less outwardly and more inwardly, just like nails and hairdo, and thus creating a need for themselves for a periodical trimming and cutting. Desires, dreams and aspirations are valuable human assets, and are very instrumental in human growth. In fact, it is these desires and urges that distinguish humans from animals. A nation bereft of a vision, is a nation that gets marked for a doom. However, there is a very useful piece of advice that our Noble Prophet (s) gave us relating to our desires and wishes, “A wise person is one who keeps a watch over his bodily desires and passions, and checks himself from that which is harmful and strives for that which will benefit him after death; and a foolish person is one who subordinates himself to his cravings and desires and expects God the fulfillment of his futile desires.” - A Tirmidhi Hadith.

Desires and passions are like gas to an engine; their main job is to provide the push; it is up to the driver to make sure which way he/she wants to go. They are like a two-edged sword; they cut both ways. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), an Austrian neurologist, was more specific about human desires: in his perception human beings in their entire life are governed by two desires: the desire to procreate, and the desire to be important. Allama Iqbal deems these desires and urges as the source of strength that fortifies the human Self. “In every atom slumbers the might of the self. Power …which leads to action”. Einstein much later in 1939 after he had presented his famous theory of Relativity: E=MC2, in a letter to President Roosevelt wrote something similar to what Iqbal had anticipated in his Israr-I Khudi (1915): “ The Equation shows that if all the energy in a half pound of any matter were released, the resulting power would equal the explosive force of seven million tons of TNT”.

Both Iqbal and Einstein were 100% right. The people of Pakistan are facing the impact of the implosion of human urges and desires when they get loose or become unbridled. Perhaps our ancestors did not have such a flaming urge of having “instant gratification”, or of being “important”, by hook or by crook as our new brand of politicians have. It does not mean that they all were stoical mystics. History sparkles with amusing examples. Once in colonial India, rich people per force maintained a second white- wife in order to get closer to the White Colonial Lords. During and after Sir Syed’s times, we see in photos, some important people wearing a neck-tie on a shalwar. Even George Washington was not devoid of this desire of being singularly distinct. He wanted himself to be addressed as, “His Mightiness, the President of the United States”; Columbus pined and pleaded for the title of “Admiral of the Ocean and Viceroy of India” though he had never reached India. People sometimes even become invalid in order to win sympathy and attention, or to get a feeling of importance. Mrs McKinley was the wife of the 25th President of the United States, Mr McKinley (1897-1901). “She got a feeling of importance by forcing her husband, the President of the United States, to neglect important affairs of state while he reclined on the bed beside her for hours at a time, his arms about her, soothing her to sleep”, writes Dale Carnegie in his book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, page 33.

Pakistan these days is wrapped in the Dharna culture, popularized by Jamait e Islami. What used to often start after the Jumma prayers as a little form of protest, has now reached its artistic perfection. It is said that even some good can be extracted from the most poisonous weeds but dharnas and our politicians do not even qualify for that rare use.

Elections, no doubt, give to the people a chance to use their inherent right to choose, but that they would unleash hidden barbarism and greed of the rich and powerful to stay in power to such an extent, had always been beyond human imagination. PILDAT, Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency, conducted a well-researched survey of the last 10 elections held in Pakistan since 1970-2013, and issued the results in its report in May 2013.

According to this report, the common thread in these last ten elections was division and polarization of the country as it happened in the elections of 1970; transfer of power from the Civilians to the Military as per the results of 1977 elections; from naked Martial Law to “Oversight by the Military”, a new formula that emerged in 1985 elections; institutionalization of the “Military Oversight” in to a system as per the 1988 elections; flowering of this “Military Oversight System” into a proper system as per the 1990 elections; threat to the system of Oversight, not as a result of some awakening, but a desire to be left alone, unchecked and un-inhibited as per the 1993 elections; failure of the Oversight System as we saw in the 1997 elections; regression from Oversight to naked Military Rule once again in 2002; transition from Military to the Democratic System as it happened in the 2008 elections; and then to the so-called first Full-Term Democratic Rule in 2013.

The most shameful part is in all the ten elections held between 1970-2013, had been the politicians' outward urge and desire for democracy in order to get into power; and their inward madness to amass power and pelf, and then acting worse than the military rulers, finally end up seeking shelter in the military lap go; and after having rested for a while, once again renew the journey towards democracy. In this game, people got tired, but not the politicians. The only five-year term completed by the politicians after the 1977 elections had been the PPP rule under President Zardari, leaving people lamenting why it happened so, why it didn’t end soon. The only one election held by a civilian government had been the election of 2013. The results warrant no commentary. The country stands where it was in 1970; polarized and divided and denuded, burdened under unbearable debt.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH PAKISTAN? Why is Pakistan so allergic or incompatible to true democracy? Why India is so good at organizing elections? The answer is simple. India got in 1990 an eccentric and terribly honest Election Commissioner named T. N. Sessan. He set the tone and the pattern of fair elections in India. On April 7 to May 12, 2014, some 815 million Indians voted in seven phases in the biggest democratic exercise on earth. 100 million more people voted since its last elections of 2009. Almost the majority accepted the elections of 2014 as clean and fair, and its results not rigged. It is a puzzle; it is just unbelievable.

State run institutions in India where public officials count, such as schools, hospitals, public transport and public works departments, are almost as corrupt and shoddy as they are in Pakistan. But not the Election Commission. According to The Economist of June, 2014 in anarticle, “Why India is so good at organizing elections?” , the answer is summarized in the following points:

It, holding elections, is a narrowly focused task of a limited duration that has been repeated.
Under similar conditions, bureaucrats deliver similar results, such as in National Census; or in the collection of biometric database of 600 million people, scanning their eyes, fingerprints etc.
State employees do well when given tasks of great prestige and put under careful public scrutiny, such as polio eradication campaign or in space agency that launched a spaceship to Mars.
Bureaucrats succeed best when given a free hand, and are free from political meddling and corruption.
Election Commission, like the Central Bank, is Independent.
While the police spend much of their time collecting bribes to pay to their superiors, election officials have neither big budgets to divert, nor have much opportunity to extract bribes.
The Indian Election Commission provides a sample which must be duplicated. It gets a well-defined target; it works in a very transparent manner, making it very hard for the politicians to meddle and steal when bureaucrats, like election officials, are under intense public scrutiny.
The country’s right-to-information law, though embarrassing to the rot, has proved very valuable
Last, and most important, bureaucrats become more efficient and less corrupt, when they lose their discretionary powers. Those who hold elections, have no discretion to decide who is allowed to vote or where; they are not supposed to ensure it all works efficiently. This leaves little incentive for people to bribe or bully them. (Continued next week)