Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Promise of Democracy
Promise of Democracy
Promise of Democracy
their representatives, the rules that govern the society they live in.
Undergirding this promise are two basic principles.
One, it is the people who choose the representatives, who, in turn, advocate for
the people’s interests in the assemblies. Two, the elected representatives are to
pursue the interests of the people who elected them, resisting the lure of self-
dealing. On both these fronts, weak democracies, such as Pakistan, fare
poorly. Only a candidate that finds favour with the majority in a constituency
must serve as their agent in the assembly. In Third World countries, such as
Pakistan, along with pre-poll rigging, such as distortion of census results and
gerrymandering of constituencies, poll results are often skewed in a far more
blatant manner.
Second, under Sections 139 and 142 of the Act, a candidate may file an election
petition before the election tribunal, within 45 days of the publication of the
election result. The tribunal has the power under Section 154, among others,
to declare the election in the entire constituency void. An appeal from the
election tribunal’s decision again lies to the Supreme Court.
As a result, the superior courts in Pakistan take centre stage when it comes to
safeguarding electoral processes. The courts’ role, meanwhile, has to be
clinical. The superior courts must be reluctant to develop tolerance for
misrepresentations and forgeries in the candidate’s nomination papers since
individuals already susceptible to deceiving may attain a public office, that, in
turn, allows for unchecked opportunities of self-enrichment. Also, the courts
must have limited tolerance for irregularities in the conduct of elections, since
otherwise they may end up rewarding candidates who have developed the
means to hoodwink the entire system.
awahid@umich.edu