EDITORIAL: The argument favouring the amendment to Article 65 of the constitution, which nullifies the election of members of parliament (National Assembly and Senate) or a provincial assembly if they fail to take the oath of office within 60 days, makes a lot of sense because it is in keeping with the most basic requirements of a properly working democracy. The straight-forward reason is that people who run extensive campaigns, win elections, and then choose not to take the oath, for one reason or another, leave their constituencies unrepresented in the halls of power. What good is the election process for the people, incidentally the lot for the benefit of whom the whole thing is designed, if they rally around a person and vote him into office only to find out that he's just not interested in taking up the responsibilities of the seat he's been elected for? Due process no doubt then demands a replacement. And considering how our traditional political class prizes its assembly and Senate seats, even if some of the more experienced lot takes them for granted sometimes, a sword hanging over their heads in the form of a deadline to complete all formalities should do the trick in at least some of the cases.

There are two prominent examples of such behaviour these days. One is former finance minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Senator Ishaq Dar, who mysteriously flew to Europe in the prime minister's official plane before the last general election and then appeared in London, allegedly too sick to travel and faces cases against himself since after it. And the other is former interior minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan, who lost his National Assembly seat as an independent candidate but was elected as a member of the Punjab assembly, yet since then seems to feel that taking the oath would amount to accepting the election's results as free, fair and transparent. That they have issues is understandable, and surely there are procedures in place for addressing them, but why do they expect everybody to just accept those seats as taken and then not honour them themselves? If the 60-day bar had been in effect the matter of just who would represent all the people in the areas they contested from would have been settled a long time ago.

To address this problem it should either be made mandatory to hold a by-election or replace whoever did not take the oath with the runner-up from the original election. Both seem to have advantages as well as disadvantages. In the first case it would make sense to let the people choose their representatives again since it did not quite work out the first time, but getting them out to vote especially to elect people for very important offices outside election season is hardly the easiest or the most transparent thing to do. Plus there's no telling if the new winner would go on to take the oath or not. In the second case, while there seems nothing wrong with just lifting the number-two from the election to whichever seat is vacated, there is always the chance of collusion between people apparently contesting against each other. If one can fetch votes and another, who is to be made the eventual winner, cannot then the first can win and then not take the oath, leaving the door open for the one who couldn't win to eventually win. However such things, though always possible, are easier said than done, not the least because there is no way of ensuring that anybody can finish at second place when there are a number of candidates.

But since the government needs to find a way out of this problem, there should be nothing wrong with the second alternative. After all, it is the Election Commission's duty to vet all candidates thoroughly, therefore it needs to be ensured that nothing slips by it at the time of submission of papers well before any general election. Then those who win should be given 60 days since the commencement of the first session of all houses and assemblies to show that they respect the office they have been voted to otherwise the next in line can simply be made to step forward. It is unfortunate that people's representatives who have been part of the system for a long time still tend to exploit loopholes in it. That makes it all the more important to plug each one as it appears.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020