Procedural democracy

Whereas the principled supporters of the democratic process in this country were upset at the incumbent government not adhering to democratic protocols when it came to the elections of the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies, they had assumed that there would be no such brazen break from norm for the general elections to the National Assembly. Yes, a party might be picked away at by the powers that be and its leaders hounded into hiding or defection, but the ticking of the boxes of the procedural democratic process, warts and all, being the low bar that it is, was just assumed.

Yet, with the Council of Common Interests unanimously approving the 2023 census on Saturday, there is now a more than distinct possibility that even the National assembly elections will not be held on time.

With the approval of the latest census, the Election Commission of Pakistan is bound to conduct fresh delimitations, an arduous process that even experts’ conservative estimates say will go on till early 2024. Since the caretaker setup is expected to take office this week, the latter’s 90-day mandate is almost certain to be crossed.

There is a consensus amongst objective - and sane - observers that there should be no delay in the polls and that no constitutional norms should be violated, but the incumbent political parties do not seem ready to play ball and stick by the same rule book they were all too fond of quoting from during their own political winter not too long ago.

The political government needs to be held accountable not just by the polity at large but also by its own ideological support base. It needs to give a clear and exact schedule for elections, about which it will give an unequivocal assurance.

Whereas it is correctly believed that the nation’s political class has been blamed more for its failures than it should have been, the bulk of the blame lying on the shoulders of non-representative forces, these particular transgressions are squarely on the politicians. The political class needs to do better by the people it claims to represent.