How elections work.

Byline: Arifa Noor

BACK in 2013, a friend of mine was certain that the PML-N had rigged the Lahore seat won by Khwaja Saad Rafique. Fast forward five years and he was convinced the Imran Khan victory in Lahore was engineered. He wasn't the only one. The conviction came not from specific incidents but the larger context in which the election took place.

In a seminar held shortly after the 2013 election, two senior people who monitor elections, argued that a fair and free election - as much as it can be in our neck of the woods - is determined in the run-up to the election. If the playing field is level, as they stated it was in 2013, the wrongdoings and irregularities on election day itself were rather insignificant in comparison. As an example, they focused on the 2002 election as one in which changes in law and zameer ki awaz (conscience) being heard clearly was enough to determine the unfairness of the election. No such thing happened in 2013, it was said.

The problem is with an electoral system that is open to manipulation.

But five years later, one of these two experts was more perturbed by what happened on election day and how it raised serious questions about the credibility of the exercise. This should not matter more than what happened in the run-up, I asked, basing my question on what he had said after the previous election. There were signs enough to show that the playing field wasn't level - why expect anything different on election day? The parties went into the election, aware of what was happening. Why now express shock?

He used the analogy of the frog in boiling water to explain why political parties were relatively silent in the run-up to the election but appeared to be more aggressive after D-day itself. The reaction of political parties (a few days after the election) was strong enough, he said, and if sustained could force a new poll.

However, as things turned out, this didn't happen. Because both he and I forgot the unspoken rule on which our electoral and political system is based.

Despite every election in Pakistan being controversial and rigged - as per the view of one party or the other - each and every one of them takes part in the system, while denouncing the election that brought it into being. And the rest of us decide which seat was rightly won or not, depending on our bias. My friend mentioned in the beginning tends to believe the underdog has been robbed of its rightful vote.

One can pick a date at random -...

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