In what the PTI is hailing as an important triumph and ‘proof’ that its rigging allegations which led to the long sit-in in Islamabad last year were valid, an election tribunal in Lahore has unseated the Speaker of the National Assembly Ayaz Sadiq and ordered a re-poll in NA-122 in Lahore from where he was elected as well as from one Punjab Assembly seats that falls under it. The seat is one of four where the PTI had sought an audit. In what sounded like a victory speech made in Lahore on Saturday night, Imran Khan stated the second wicket had fallen and others were to follow. It may be noted an election tribunal had also declared the election in NA-125 also in Lahore null and void in May this year, unseating Federal Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique. We cannot begrudge the PTI their jubilation, of late they have been widely and roundly criticized for their destabilizing sit-ins. Predictably, and a little worryingly, the ‘rigging’ narrative returned as Imran Khan addressed party supporters, as did threats of further sit-ins if the Election Commission Pakistan did not reply to PTI’s letter to them. With MQM causing the government a headache, and religious parties hindering implementation of the NAP, a resurgent PTI pushing the rigging narrative would be the last thing the government wanted. The direction the party takes from this moment forward is still undecided; so far the party has played a constructive role in the parliament after their return, and it is hoped they continue to do so. As for Ayaz Sadiq, the removal as the Speaker of National Assembly must come as a disgrace. While he and his legal consul stresses that the tribunal declared the election null and void based on ‘irregularities’ in the election process – the blame for which is laid at the ECP’s doorstep – and not evidence of rigging, the distinction matters very little for the wider population. He reserves the right to appeal, and the final result may yet change, but the political implications of this initial verdict are already being felt. Major blow that the election tribunal verdict is to the ruling PML-N, will it, as Imran Khan and various PTI leaders are crowing, prove a turning point for the PTI’s political fortunes? Perhaps the triumphalism dripping from the PTI’s post-verdict pronouncements may be premature. Say the other two seats whose election results have been challenged by the PTI also go its way, what will that prove? If the verdicts in those two cases follow the lines of the Judicial Commission’s findings as the first two have done, it will at best uphold the PTI’s challenge on these four seats. To justify at this juncture the damage caused to the democratic system and the country’s development by the months-long sit-in by arguing that rigging has been proved by the election tribunals’ verdicts is to defy logic and the facts. And to go on to assert that these two verdicts prove why the PML-N government refused an audit of the election in these four constituencies is to ignore the fact that this was not the purview of the executive but that of the Election Commission. That body would have, and did, refer the complainant/s to the election tribunals as the law prescribes, bringing the whole process precisely to where it stands today. Had Imran Khan and the PTI not embarked on the sit-in adventure and had the patience to pursue the four cases before the proper forum, the election tribunals, the country would have been spared the months-long paralysis produced by the sit-in and not rocked the democratic system to its roots.
pk.shafaqna.com
