Ruling against Ayaz Sadiq a morale booster for PTI

ISLAMABAD: The Lahore election tribunal decision, unseating Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, has pushed the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) out of lingering despair and despondency inflicted by the 3-member inquiry commission’s report, but the ruling did not affect the larger political or parliamentary picture.
The verdict served as a morale booster for the PTI, when it was on the back foot, instead of producing any massive political gains because any edge got over the rivals due to any major development has to be demonstrated at the ballot box.
It is questionable how the PTI’s fortunes have gone up too much only owing to this lone verdict when Imran Khan’s main case regarding poll rigging had been absolutely rejected by the 3-member inquiry commission last month.
However, outburst of joy and ecstasy by Imran Khan and his comrades over the victory is justified and rightful, but as usual the result of the initial judicial battle swayed him into going overboard once again by declaring to stage a sit-in outside the offices of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) if it did not reply to its July 30 6-page letter, demanding punishment to those responsible for gross irregularities.
Conversely, the decision flabbergasted the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). The anguish it experienced was evident from a comment passed by Information Minister Pervez Rashid in which he said the judge was biased and more keen for self-projection.
After a long time, Imran heard good news. The latest shock he had received was the defeat of his candidate in the by-election for NA-19 Haripur with a phenomenal margin of more than 45,000 votes. Before that, the PTI had lost at least five by-polls it had contested directly or indirectly following the 2014 sit-in. The dismal outcome of the Haripur fight impelled the PTI chief to restrict political activities of his wife, Reham Khan, who had campaigned hard for her party’s candidate in this by-poll.
The whole edifice of poll allegations that the PTI had built since long had totally collapsed when the inquiry commission had dismissed all of its charges and held the 2013 elections as legitimate and the PML-N having won the exercise justifiably.
The ECP’s incompetence and inefficiency in which Ayaz Sadiq had no role, resulted in his temporary ouster from the National Assembly. He has not been accused of rigging the election in the tribunal verdict. Like Khawaja Saad Rafique, he was also severely punished for the ECP faux pas, if the Supreme Court finally upheld the decisions of the two election tribunals. The instant judgment is not an indictment of Ayaz Sadiq in any sense. The judge wrote that he was of the considered view that the election machinery completely and miserably failed to comply with the law.
After the inquiry commission’s report, Imran had written a letter to the ECP urging it to penalise its officials, who were responsible for committing irregularities. By threatening a sit-in in front of it, he has tried to intimidate the ECP, which, however, is unlikely to be bullied as it has not so far paid any attention to his missive for at least three weeks now.
The irregularities, and not rigging, of the ECP that the present decision has talked about were also elaborately listed by the inquiry commission. However, at no stage did these findings declare the PML-N guilty of committing them.
However, the ECP says at least 90pc of the lapses and shortcomings will go away after the electoral reforms, being firmed up by a bipartisan parliamentary committee, will be introduced.
The commission report had recognised at least nine major flaws in the planning and execution of the polls by the ECP and the electoral body’s non-compliance with the laws. The 237-page report discussed in detail the ECP role in conducting the elections and raised serious questions about its performance in planning and executing the polls.
It particularly mentioned nine examples of poor planning by ECP including lack of a formula for determining excess ballots; the decision to rely on only four printing presses; belated shifting of ballot papers from one press to other; failure to develop effective voter verification method; failure to establish and use an effective results management system; late provision of election material to some polling stations; and lack of its own storage space.
The report said the formula for determining excess ballots i.e. rounding up on the basis of polling stations was not adequately communicated to the Returning Officers (ROs), particularly in the Punjab. Even otherwise the method of calculating the number of excess ballots was not uniform throughout Pakistan. For example, in three out of the four provinces (Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) the Provincial Election Commissions (PECs), which had received a copy of the action plan of the 2013 elections, decided on the number of ballots to be printed against no discernible formula despite the formula to be followed being set out in the action plan.
In the Punjab, the determination was left to the ROs who seemed to have received very little, if any, guidance on this point and as such the number of excess ballots requested per constituency varied greatly.
According to the report, even where the PECs decided the number of ballots there was little uniformity and it is unclear whether rounding up on a polling station wise basis as per the instructions contained in the action plan were complied with.
The commission said the decision to rely on only four printing presses was fraught with danger especially due to the lack of capacity of the Lahore Printing Press. It was also known that the Printing Corporation of Pakistan had no automated system for numbering which had to be done manually and therefore extra personnel would most likely be needed for this purpose. An extra press such as the postal foundation should have been contracted from the start and a sufficient number of personnel for manual numbering and binding should have been hired by the start of printing, it said.