Suggestions For Polls
The measure of democratic norms is an inexact science that is often manipulated to suit the country, entity or individual taking that measure. The meaning and usefulness of democracy depends to what extent it serves the interests thereof of the practitioner. It suits authoritarian regimes to describe their concept of democracy as that suited to “the genius of the people”, it does not need a genius to surmise that democracy is often tailored to foster acceptance of domination by a strong minority, often perversely and contrary to the interests of the majority. The difference between such a “democracy” and dictatorship lies in the eyes of the beholder, at least in a dictatorship we hold one person accountable. In the two major democracies of the US and India, rightfully proud as bastions of democracy, “the first past the post” system negates the rule of the majority in favour of a strong minority, only 5% winning candidates got more than 50%. The need for a majority to exercise the voters’ mandate must be sacrosanct.
A candidate getting less than an absolute majority is democratically “elected”, in most electoral systems, it is only when he or she gains an absolute majority that the requirements of democracy as far as the right of the majority to rule is fulfilled. In some countries e.g. in France, failure to get an absolute majority in the initial round leads to run-off between the first two candidates to determine the absolute majority. There are three major objectives achieved by the “run-off” concept viz (1) an absolute majority of voters in any elections chooses a candidate (2) forcing a choice between two candidates it also forces voters having different beliefs into one common cauldron, i.e. a coalition of sorts at the ballot box instead of manipulations in smoke-field backrooms afterwards and (3) instead of concentrating his (or her) attention post-election on one core group which got him (or her) elected, once elected he (or she) has to look after his (or her) whole constituency.
No country in the world has a more dire necessity of the “run-off” concept than Pakistan. With a fractious society divided along ethnic and sectarian lines, a “run-off” forces diverse ethnic and sectarian groups and individuals to coalesce around someone who may not be their first choice, but who in their opinion is more acceptable than the other one. Instead of contriving artificial alliances, this unintended coalition becomes a natural alliance. A cursory study our the election results since 1988 will show that it is only in 15% of the electorate that candidates get an absolute majority (i.e. getting 40% or more votes) or come close to getting it. Barely another 15% get between 30-40% of the vote, as much as nearly 70% who are elected get less than 30% of the vote to sit in the National Assembly or the Provincial Assemblies. While they do represent some of the people in any constituency, they do not represent the wishes of a majority of them. Both the major political parties who ruled Pakistan (twice in their turn) for most of the 90s never got more than 30% of the total vote, and the votes cast were less than 50% in a majority of the constituencies, translating into the fact that their mandate was trusted by less than 15% of the population. Where is then peoples’ participation in governance? No country can be united or will progress without wholehearted peoples’ participation, presently voter skepticism about the power of the individual vote keeps voters away from the ballot box. Voter skepticism has rapidly developed into apathy that accepts that the system allows strong minority factions to dominate Parliament. On the other hand, the “majority vote” system will galvanize candidates, instead of the dropping of percentages in voter turnout, they will be encouraged to exercise their right of franchise. As the knowledge seeps into the body politic of Pakistan that every vote matters, more and more people will go to vote and/or be persuaded to do so. The ballot box is the basic measure of democracy, the percentage of peoples participation will define the full extent of democracy.
One of the factors undermining democracy in the third world (and in the first world too as we saw in Florida in 2000) is election fraud and manipulation by vote rigging and fraudulent casting of votes. Many times people reach the polling booth to discover that their vote has already been cast by someone else. When large numbers do not go out to vote in any constituency, it gives room to the unscrupulous to organize fraudulent votes to cast bogus votes on behalf of the real voter. In fact the election is more and more dependent on organizing transportation effectively on Election Day. When more and more voters taking part this will be difficult to organize on a mass basis as is being done now. This bogus vote by itself is not only a negation of democracy by installing a non-representative candidate who has been elected by fraud. This perpetuates criminality into the very forum that is the final authority for making the laws of the land. When criminals become lawmakers, what can one expect from them except criminality proliferating across the broad spectrum of society. When criminals function in the name of justice, justice becomes a crime? Those who are not criminals are forced to compromise with those who are. A manifestation of this can easily be seen in the world’s so-called largest democracy where many of the legislators in Bihar, VP, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujerat, etc are either convicted or indicted criminals.
The other issue of importance is proportional representation on the strength of percentage of votes cast. Look at the British Parliament, the percentage difference between the two major parties Labour (37%) and Conservates (33%) in Elections 2005 was only 4%, yet Labour got more 150 seats more than Conservates, whereas the poor Liberals (22%) got far less, only about 50 seats when they should have got around 100-120 seats according to the voting percentage. For 37% of the votes cast, Labour got almost 50% seats, while Conservatives got about the same percentage of seats as votes cast. This means Labour gamed at the expense of Liberals. This again negates the basic essence of peoples representation. 50% of the seats should be decided on the run-off system, 50% of the seats must go to the various parties as per the percentages they poll in the elections. This slate of each party must comprise of those losing candidates in priority who have the higher percentage of votes in any constituency. If PPP gets 25% of the votes cast, it must get a similar percentage of the balance 50% in a 600 seat Parliament, ie 75 seats. The candidates must be elected in order of priority of the percentage of votes they got as the losing candidate. In that way the balance is restored in favor of peoples’ representation.
Any electoral exercise that is not heavily weighted to give peoples representation is ultimately bound to fail, without true peoples’ representation there can be no real democracy.
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