As a policy giving institution, PKKH does not consider it its premises to support any political party, but it does consider itself to be a strong opposition to all political parties, in democratic spirit, as it considers it mandatory upon the people of Pakistan to keep an extremely critical eye on the incomplete, immature and corrupt democratic process existing within our political parties and in the country on the whole.
It is a shame that on one side the lovers and advocators of democracy shudder with the mere thought of its derailment, and on the other hand are not at all alarmed by the desecration of its very spirit at each and every pillar of its foundation. Does democracy allow nepotism, bribery, rigging and the compromising of all institutions, or do such things cut the possibility of any democracy what so ever, from the very roots.
If democracy rests on the presumption that all eligible voters are equally sensible, unbiased and correct; then how does democracy work without even a correct set of institutions? Simply put there can be no democracy i.e. the ‘will of the people’, if that very ‘will’ is obliterated on the very day it was given the chance to be expressed by the people, after a 5-year period. And the one institution responsible for the free and fair expression of that ‘will’ is the Election Commission of Pakistan.
This means that if a nation takes up the Parliamentary form of Democracy as its formal working system, then the will of the people is already squeezed to 1 day out of the 5years, compared to a ‘Direct Democracy’ working in some European countries, wherein people choose all year long. Meaning that in our system, if the ‘will of the people’ is misunderstood on this one day, the other 5 years are bound to be a mess; that democracy is truly exhibited on that 1 day equivalent in power and effect as its exhibition in the next 5 years.
And there is always the possibility that the people will be unable to make the right choice for numerous paradigms that may be driving the mob-sense of the populace in waves of confusion, generated by false slogans, clan intimidation, peer pressure, false conception about the acts and policies of their electable and so on and so forth. But the lovers of Democracy are always happy take all this for granted and to give a blind eye to such magnanimous and inevitable realities; and we comply with them. We comply with their case when they say that the masses are fully aware, and that their decision will be the most correct one, and we rest our case, just for the sake of peace with the world wide wave for democracy, in the belief that it must have ‘something’ good to offer us. But what has it to offer us?
The inability of the Election Commission to ensure a free and fair electoral process is most alarming; and even before that to ensure the absolute recognition of honest people who have not looted the money and resources of the people is most compulsory, if any democracy is to be achieved. It must be understood that rigging on the day of ballot, is the theft of the people’s mandate, and those who commit rigging are not the representatives of the people but tyrant occupiers of their mandate and there is no difference between such leaders and the despotic kings of the olden days.
It must be understood that the electoral process is the birthplace of democracy, and those who hijack the ballot, actually have killed the unborn baby of democracy in the womb. This crime is the absolute crime upon a people’s right of self-determination and a mockery of the sensibility and awareness of the voter.
In our view, at PKKH, the ECP and the ECP alone is responsible for the rigging in the elections, and it is upon the ECP to satisfy, with peace and in democratic spirit, the reservations of the public upon all and any constituencies whereby evidences of rigging are available. This may not deliver justice to the people, if rigging has been massive and country-wide, but at least the process of re-polling at evident seats, may revive the dying trust of the people in the ‘system of democracy’, to the minimum level that things could be pulled on.
We believe that the ECP and the people are in a covenant of trust and from within this covenant are born the mandate that reach all the parties and spread onto 5 years. If the ECP is corrupt and the mandate is transferred to the wrong people, democracy is as good as dead before it was ever delivered. Therefore if the ECP, the civil society and all those who advocate democracy are content with rigging and want the nation to forgive, accept and move forward with a crippled, deformation of a democracy, and embrace it in good-sportsman spirit, that will be no less than collective suicide of both the material and sublime halves of the nation.
