View Point: Presidential election: Controversy and consensus issues

As expected, the PML-N candidate for president, Mamnoon Hussain, easily sailed to victory winning 432 electoral votes from Parliament and provincial assemblies while the PTI’s former Justice Wajihuddin Ahmad received 77 votes. The PPP had boycotted the election, accusing the Supreme Court of showing partiality to the PML-N because on its orders the election was held one week earlier than the original schedule announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

PTI Chairman Imran Khan railed against the ECP for messing up the election schedule, using the opportunity to give vent to his anger against the Commission over its alleged irregularities in May 11 elections that he calls the ‘greatest election fraud’, but decided to participate in the presidential race ‘under protest’. The PTI put up its candidate, Imran said, not to give a walkover to the ruling party. Also, it must have wanted to make the point that it represents a sound future alternative. As it happened, a PML-N leader had approached the Supreme Court asking for change in schedule in view of the fact that the August 6 election date would fall during the last ten days of Ramazan when many members of the electoral college would either be in Makkah performing Umra or observing spiritual meditation in ‘eitkaf.’ And it would be only three days before the Eid festival. Postponement till after Eid was not possible because under the relevant constitutional provision, it had to be held 30 days before and not 60 days earlier than the expiry of the incumbent’s term, which ends on September 8. That made August 9 the cut-off date.

Even secular Western societies do not schedule important political events during Christmas holiday season. The ECP clearly acted carelessly in picking a date without taking into account factors surrounding the timing. It made perfect sense therefore for the court to bring the date forward from August 6 to July 30. It could have handled the case better, however, by following the normal procedure and asking the two other candidates to make their respective cases before making the decision it made. Instead it acted with undue haste, generating an unnecessary controversy. The election outcome was never in doubt. The Nawaz League had the numbers in its favour. A week more of campaigning wouldn’t have helped the PPP. Even though members of Parliament and provincial assemblies choose the president through secret balloting, they vote on party basis.

The date hence was not much of an issue for the PPP. The court decision in favour of a Nawaz League petitioner came as an unforeseen opportunity it simply could not let go by without crying foul and pointing a finger at the court. The reason is more than obvious. At the news conference the party’s presidential candidate, Senator Raza Rabbani, called to announce the boycott, another senior leader Senator Aitzaz Ahsan went into a long spiel accusing the apex court of giving a favourable treatment to the PML-N. Various other party leaders have since been singing the same tune. All through its five years in power, the party had remained in a state of confrontation with the Supreme Court over corruption cases involving its president, two prime ministers, and several other ministers.

The decision time is fast approaching. Hence the purpose of creating a controversy over election schedule is to make the court, rather than the election process, controversial so it can shrug off some of the negative impact on public opinion that the things to come are likely to bring in their fold. At his news conference, while ranting about the court decision, the ECP’s incompetence and the PML-N’s behaviour, Rabbani gave a hint of the party’s intentions, carefully choosing the language as he averred in Punjabi “kahaani tey aithun shroo hondi ai (now the fun begins).” Which means we should all now brace for a more fierce confrontation with the court, and use of the old Sindh card.

While the PPP used the election to generate a self-serving controversy, the PML-N focused on a preoccupation peculiar to our politicians: creating consensus for the election of prime minister or president. The PPP tried and succeeded in having Yousuf Raza Gilani as consensus candidate for prime minister. If it brought any good to the democratic process or the public, that remains a mystery. The PML-N tried but failed to have a similar consensus for Nawaz Sharif’s election. For the presidential election, the party had sufficient numerical strength on its own at the federal level and in Punjab, considerable presence in the KPK Assembly, the support of its coalition partners in Balochistan and of its ally Functional Muslim League in Sindh.

That should have taken care of its concern that the president, being a symbol of the federation, should get votes from all the provinces. Yet it chose to approach a bitter adversary of not-so-distant past, the MQM, in an atmosphere of contrived bonhomie to have the party vote for its candidate. This is a wrong idea of creating consensus democracy. Consensus building, surely, is important – all the more so in a nascent democracy like Pakistan’s. But it should focus on strengthening democratic institutions and processes, and evolving a shared approach on important issues facing the State and society, such as the threat of different types of terrorism, the form economic revival must take, and policy towards important neighbours like India, Iran, and Afghanistan as well as the superpower, the US. In the final reckoning the government will be judged on the basis of the good it brings to maximum number of people rather than how many parties voted for the President or the Prime Minister.

saida_fazal@yahoo.com