Elections or Accountability?
The great debate about whether elections should be held first or accountability should precede elections is on. Having swiftly enacted the Ehtesab (Accountability) Ordinance, the Caretaker Government have also appointed as Chief Ehtesab Commissioner, a respected non-controversial retired Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court, Mr. Ghulam Mujaddid Mirza. Both the President and the Caretaker PM Malik Meraj Khalid have repeated the intention of the Caretaker government to have the February 3 elections as scheduled. Given the enormous task of holding a whole slate of people accountable since January 1, 1986, it would seem logistically impossible to complete the accountability process in the next 70 days. How then do we reconcile this great divide?
The arguments for accountability are very cogent. This nation has been looted in the name of democracy under the flimsy cover of the Constitution. Given the enormous wealth in the hand of the looters they could conceivably buy their way back into power and thus frustrate the accountability process. We have seen how Ms Benazir, without a mandate from the people, was manipulated into power by a combination of power and intrigue in 1993. Conceivably money and intrigue could play a part in foisting the likes of Zardari on us again. Even in first world countries like the US, an election campaign war chest is important to winning elections, in Third World countries where voters are mostly illiterate or ignorant on a relative basis, an enormous election fund is more than likely to ensure victory. To add insult to injury, the looters will use a classic “Judo play”, using money looted from the national treasury to influence the voters so that once in power they can proceed to loot the nation even more, inflicting more torture on the populace. By itself, this makes for good enough reason to delay the elections until the accountability process is complete.
