Powering the voter

The countdown to the July 25 election is on. While the political parties and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) are busy setting schedules for election preparations voter preparation and education is key to determine the future of the country. Democracy by definition is the rule of the majority vote and in the majority vote the level of informed and quality of choices that a voter makes is ultimately the quality of governance a country experiences.

There are many factors which make a voter elect a certain party or a certain candidate. These factors are a combination of emotional and rational factors. The emotional factors include the sentimental value a voter attaches to the party, the history and background of the candidate, the type of campaign appeals that are being made by the candidate etc. The rational factors include what benefits the voter will receive if the candidate is elected. These also include solutions to national issues like load shedding and inflation to development works in the locality and jobs, etc.

Political loyalties are hard to change and even in mature democracies with educated voters party loyalties are very entrenched. Countries like the UK and the USA have been dominated by the traditional two-party system. Even in India it is mainly Congress Vs BJP. Pakistan also has been a traditional two-party system with PPP and PMLN sharing the major vote and it was only in the 2013 elections that PTI managed to secure the second highest vote creating a third major choice for voters which is perhaps a very uncommon occurrence in democratic history.

The more educated and aware the voter the more vigilant the political parties and the stronger the democracy. In most underdeveloped countries, the majority of the voter is not really literate either education wise or vote wise. The rural area voter makes choices pre-decided by the local bigwigs who control his livelihood or the elders of the family who through the traditional baradari system just give the power to the head of the family to decide block votes for a particular party. Traditionally this has been the pattern in almost 60% of rural and semi urban constituencies of Pakistan.

Relying on educating voters through electronic media by conducting big expensive rallies meant that this decades old tradition of party or baradari loyality continued in Pakistan with PMLN Vs PPP taking their turns in government. However a new phenomenon and its tools have made it possible to reach these voters: social media. Pakistan has the fastest internet growth in the region at 20% compared to world average of 10%, and 35% growth in social media users compared to 21% in the world. Earlier, rural campaigns were dependent on PTV as the most available channel, further restricted due to sixteen hours of load shedding, has now been overcome by the availability of all videos and messages via Social media on phones.

However, the problem with social media is that it is very difficult to make out fake from the true news. Photoshopped pictures, cut-and-paste videos, fabrication, fake accounts mislead the most informed of people. In a low literacy society such material can really mislead the voters as propaganda by political parties becomes more hyped and truth becomes buried in loud rhetoric.

In countries like Pakistan where the Election Commission is not fully autonomous and empowered and governments are not transparent and accountable the electoral laws and the electoral officers not stringent enough to screen out ineligible candidates, the role of the civil society, media and general public becomes very crucial. Though the candidate filing form has now been restored to the older requirement of more information it still remains a very routine tick box process.

The role of the political parties and media, especially social media, is apparent from the recent Farooq Bandiyal PTI joining case. He was a convict in the actress Shabnam gang rape case. It was an atrocity of the worst order as this rape was conducted in front of the family and Farooq along with the gang was punished but forgiven by Shabnam as her son’s life was threatened by them. He was a member of other political parties for 20 years but nobody commented on his credentials. It was only when he joined PTI and was seen as a potential candidate for them that social media exploded with background information. PTI critics and supporters, media analysts all brought out facts that put pressure on PTI to immediately expel Farooq Bandiyal from their party.

This is the information power to the public that can create a pressure for parties not to select such candidates and also for voters not to elect such candidates. This is known as naming and shaming campaign. Some years ago, in South Korea, the nation’s leading citizen associations worked together a list of all the candidates for public office whose names were tainted by corruption. Almost 80% of those candidates whose reputations were thus exposed did lose their elections as voters armed with information declined to vote for ethically compromised candidates.

Voter empowerment through information needs a three-pronged approach. Firstly, the political parties should make the criteria of selecting candidates public and also make public the information on who and why these people have been awarded tickets. Secondly, Election Commission should make the Candidate Scrutiny process very rigorous and publicly announce rejections of papers based on discrepancy. Thirdly, Civil Society Organizations like FAFEN(Free and Fair Election Network) and others should run an analysis on ticket holders and put it on the Social Media to let people decide whether they want to vote for such a candidates or not. After all a more informed, empowered, active voter is the best custodian of the true spirit of democracy.