Though nobody here has apparently complained against the conduct of February 18 polls and the election results were accepted without demur, the EU observers of the electoral exercise found them falling short of international standards.
Launching the final assessment report on the elections the other day, the chief observer, Member European Parliament Michael Gahler, said no doubt the February 18 elections were competitive and the results were accepted but "there are enduring problems with the framework and conditions" for elections in Pakistan. He warned if corrective measures were not taken in the problematic areas identified after the elections "there was a serious risk of electoral problems in future".
This assessment by the EU observers, about 300 of them who were here for about three months and had monitored the electoral process in totality, from beginning to the end, has been rejected by the Election Commission of Pakistan. Reacting almost instinctively, an official of the ECP insisted the elections were free and fair and everybody accepted the results. Earlier also, the commission had ignored EU's recommendations following the 2002 polls to make elections truly democratic.
The hard fact is that parties on both sides of the national political divide accepted the results of the February 2008 polls, in sharp contrast to the opposition's pre-poll vociferous hue and cry against the credibility of the ECP. Not only were the commission officials dubbed partisan, every aspect of their work was suspected as a machination to deprive the then opposition of a level playing field.
But all that suspicion and protest just vanished as soon as results came in, that gave the opposition a stunning victory over the government parties' candidates. What had brought about this enigmatic change in the attitude of the opposition remains inexplicable - unless we factor in the fact that the opposition was unaware of the size and strength of the popularity wave it was riding.
The regime had become extremely unpopular and there was hardly a person who would openly vouch for its performance and vote for its candidates. The people wanted to get rid of the regime by casting the vote for anybody who was standing against the government candidates. But the leadership of the opposition, placed as it was in not very helpful circumstances both individually and collectively, was not fully aware of this ground reality.
Therefore, when results came in they played them by the ear and ran full speed without looking back. Whatever they had said about the ECP was a thing of the past and they felt no more a need to come back and tilt at it.
But the EU observers' mission is not overwhelmed by such exuberance. They believe it is a situation of 'now or never' for electoral reforms to obtain conditions for holding free and fair elections. Its 70-page report does bring under sharp focus many a situation that militates against the claim of free and fair elections.
For instance, it is aware of the constituencies and polling stations with implausibly high turnouts and questionable margins of victory. The mission head says in most of such cases the former ruling parties had benefited. But the ECP did not notice these malpractice's; "rather it made sweeping rejections of complaints".
The observers also found the state media partial, women severely unrepresented, an independent judiciary "enjoying public confidence" not in place and the Election Commission of Pakistan required to be independent. These and other observations and recommendations made by the EU mission deserve serious consideration at the level of the government, even when some functionaries in the ECP may have a different opinion on them.
Pakistan's future lies in democracy, pure and undiluted democracy which can be ensured only through fair and free elections that in no case should fall short of international standards.
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