THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF PAKISTAN:Senate Polls: Secrecy Breeds Distortion

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Lesson 10

THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF PAKISTAN

Note: As the verbal content of this lecture and the power-point presentation convey, students have been

provided with a fairly comprehensive outlined of what constitutes the framework and the institutions and

organizations of the political system of Pakistan.

The purpose of this handout is to enable students to appreciate the scope for substantive reforms of the

political system with particular reference to the mode of election to the Upper House of the Federal

Parliament and to the special importance of this legislature.

While the text of this handout has been published in a leading newspaper of Pakistan in 2003, the material has

not yet appeared in a book.

Senate Polls: Secrecy Breeds Distortion

Ideally, the Senate of Pakistan should be a directly elected forum because it is only through such a mode of

election that an Upper House can become the corner-stone of an equitable Federation. A directly elected

legislature with additional reserved seats for women, minorities and technocrats in which all four provinces

have equal representation, and which has financial authority can alone provide the balance and equilibrium in

the distribution of power. The Federation of Pakistan has always been lop-sided because one province's

population is more than that of all the other three combined.

Several attempts had to be made in the USA over many years in the early part of the 20th century before the

American Senate was also converted from an indirectly chosen forum to a directly elected House. Until the

ideal becomes possible, and while retaining an indirectly elected House, a basic, simple change in the

procedure to elect Senators can make a transforming difference to the integrity of the electoral process and to

the stature of the House as a whole.

As the new Parliament of Pakistan belatedly completes its initial, formative phase with the oath-taking of

members and the election of the Chairman and the Deputy Chairman on 12 March 2003, notwithstanding the

controversy over LFO, it is relevant to review the manner in which this particular Upper House has been

constituted.

The fact that the Awami National Party has taken the extreme step of expelling three of its own members of

the Provincial Assembly in NWFP for having "betrayed the Party" during the Senate elections is an example

of the severe distortions that marked the pre-poll phase, such severe distortions being the precise reason why

this writer also decided to retire from the election.

But the issue of severe distortions that adversely affected the elections goes far beyond an individual case.

Virtually every political party, even including the member-parties of the ruling coalition at the Centre known

as the Grand National Alliance has been affected by irregularities and malpractices. Neither the so-called

"religious parties" which are, in theory, supposed to be paragons of virtue compared to the "non-religious

parties" remained free of ethical pollution nor did those parties claiming to be the custodians of

constitutionalism and democracy which accuse the ruling coalition of various sins remain untouched by

aberrations in the pre-poll phase.

Allegations of kidnapping MPAs to secure their votes come side by side with charges of straightforward vote-

buying as also the, unwillingness of some party MPAs to abide by their party leaders' directives about which

candidates to support.

Such pre-poll distortions have compounded the intrinsic paradox which is partially the result of the first-past-

the post system used to elect the National Assembly and the Provincial Assemblies. The party that polled the

highest votes on 10 October 2002, i.e. about 25 per cent is represented in the Senate by only 11 members, i.e.

about 11 per cent.

Perhaps the root cause of the problem in the Senate polls is the secret mode of voting for candidates.

Whereas there is an essential requirement for privacy and secrecy when a voter marks a ballot in a direct

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election in favour of a party or a candidate, the use of secret voting in the indirectly elected system by which

Senators are chosen, creates the scope for both corruption and coercion.

There is a special irony of contrasts when it comes to the subjects on which votes are taken and the modes of

voting. On issues concerning fundamental national interests, be they Constitution-making or Constitution-

amending, be they matters of public policy with regard to legislation in any sphere or, for that matter, be it in

the election by the National Assembly of the Leader of the House where voting is by audible, verifiable

"ayes" or "nays" or the mode of "division", with every member having to stand, and be seen by the world

and be counted ⎯ or be seated, as the case may be, when it comes to abstentions! ⎯ in the case of electing

members to the Upper House, the method used is furtive and unverifiable.

In 2003, the Senate elections have also demonstrated a new crudity of intervention and manipulation by

officials claiming to act on behalf of State institutions, which, in any case, have no mandate to interfere in

political party affairs. The 1985 Senate elections held under martial law on a non-Party basis and, therefore

theoretically offering far greater scope for covert manipulation by non-political forces, remained free from the

kind of blatant, up-front role played in 2003 by officers of an intelligence organization.

Yet the decline in norms of conduct is not confined to official agencies. One sad manifestation of the

deterioration came on the very day that I was going to address a letter to the Returning Officer informing him

of my decision of retirement from the election. On walking into my office from an early morning outside

appointment, I found a lady waiting to see me. She claimed to have met me on an earlier occasion which I

could not recall. She then proceeded to say that she had come on behalf of a woman MPA who had heard of

my candidature for election to the Senate. When I acknowledged that I was still a candidate but was not aware

of why her visit was taking place, she provided the not-so-subtle hint that her MPA friend may be favourably

inclined to cast her vote for me if we could "discuss the matter further".

After thanking her for her interest, I requested her to convey my advice to her MPA friend to the effect that

the MPA should fully abide by whatever decision her party made with regard to her vote and to remember

that the votes by which she was elected and the vote that she was about to cast are sacred trusts. Immediately

after this uninvited sermon from me, when I informed the visitor of my decision to retire from the election

that very day and offered her a cup of tea, the lady had no time to spare for my hospitality though she had

previously waited patiently for me for well-over an hour!

The most disquieting aspect of the episode was that, whereas in 1985, as an independent candidate

successfully seeking support from other independent MPAs elected on a non-Party basis (even though many

MPAs were members of various factions of the Muslim League, and of the Jamaat-i-Islami, JUI, JUP, etc.)

one had never been approached by an MPA, or a representative, soliciting payment in return for a vote. But

then, time brings progress!

There is no bias intended in revealing the gender of both the person representing the MPA and the MPA

herself. The gender is entirely incidental. Some male MPAs are as, if not more, willing to sell their votes. It is

even more important to emphasize that the majority of MPAs preserved their values and practised discipline.

This is specially relevant because there is a tendency to portray legislators as being fickle and unreliable. The

weaknesses of some legislators have tainted the reputation of all those who are otherwise honourable persons,

and have sullied the electoral process.

To off-set this unseemly attempt, there was also the generous and unsolicited offer by three MPAs from two

parties other than my own to give me their first preference votes without any consideration whatsoever,

disregarding their parties' directives. For reasons that need not be detailed here, I was not willing or able to

accept their very kind offer. The point of citing this instance is to show that even while some persons were

succumbing to various temptations and pressures, there were also others willing to vote entirely by

conviction, and without any compensation.

Another disturbing trend in these Senate elections was the whimsical and capricious role played by the

leaderships of several political parties in the allocation of Party tickets and in the decisions to extend support

to particular candidates. Instead of practicing the principles of internal party democracy and consultation to

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respect the views of party workers and leaders, many tickets were allocated on the personal preferences of

party heads or of a small faction of the party favoured by the party leader. In several instances in various

parties, individuals who have served the political process with devotion for a long period and have worked

tirelessly for their respective parties were by-passed in favour of persons known only to the party leader, or

for persons who are able to make large donations to the party to secure the party ticket.

There is also a need to conduct drastic reform of the method by which political parties allocate party tickets

to candidates. Decisions should be based on the views of the respective constituency units, be that at district

or provincial level so that their binding force cannot so easily be over-ruled by a sole party leader or by a

small faction. A party leader should always have a margin to exercise individual discretionary preference, but

such a margin should be minimal, and not, as at present, maximalist.

The revelatory aspect of the final chapter in the formative phase of the new Parliament is that, despite the

previous chapters having been decisively shaped by a Party-based system that minimizes the role of individual

independent candidates, elections to the Senate in 2003 featured the weird spectacle of MPAs being directed

by their party leaders and by the covert interventionists to cast their votes for certain independent candidates

who had no previous linkage with their respective parties!

In such circumstances, it is possible to make only an informal and approximate estimate of the extent to

which these distortions affected the outcome. This writer's assessment is that about one-fourth or one-fifth

of the results were manoeuvred. To state this is not to demean the dignity of an elected forum: it is to

underline that a 20 per cent scale of distortion is quite substantial and is unwelcome. Given reforms, it is also

easily avoidable.

An open, transparent, non-secret basis for electing members of the Senate through the existing indirect

method will, at one stroke, eliminate the scope for the non-accountable use of bribery, intimidation and

manipulation. It will give unprecedented credibility to the composition of the Senate and a moral strength

that is direly needed for the Parliament of Pakistan.

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