People vote on party performance, not advice of men in uniform: DG ISPR

News Analysis |

Pakistan is all set to hold the general elections on July 25^th. Political parties, activists and media are doing the needful to ensure that more and more people come out to vote on polling day. But, at the same time, there are some controversies as well. Many segments of civil society and media have accused the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) of wrongly allocating polling station security duties to armed forces over the civilian police.

This decision by ECP gives impetus to narratives of establishment tampering in elections 2018, and also reflect institutional mistrust in the civilian police. The ECP must balance out the anti-establishment narrative with the inefficient institutions narrative and ensure that the armed forces don’t have an excessively visible role to play in the elections to curb antiestablishment criticism.

The ECP, in response to criticism, on Tuesday said that the security personnel will be in charge of providing security at different stages of the Election Day process. The report had quoted the Code of Conduct for the upcoming elections for its premise.

Pakistan is all set to hold the general elections on July 25^th. Political parties, activists and media are doing the needful to ensure that more and more people come out to vote on polling day. But, at the same time, there are some controversies as well.

It said that paragraph XIV of the Code of Conduct for Security Officials for General Elections 2018 only requires security personnel to ensure that the PO is able to freely and securely transmit the results.

Later on, the director general (DG) Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor said that the armed forces will only support the electoral process and have “no direct role in conduct of elections”.  DG ISPR  gave details of the troop deployments during past elections. He said that in 1997, 192,000 troops had been deployed to oversee 25,000 polling stations for what he termed a “full deployment”.

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Then, in 2002, the army personnel deployed were less than 35,000 troops at 64,470 polling stations “because the ECP only tasked the Army with overall security”. Likewise, in 2008, 39,000 troops were deployed even though the number of polling stations was much higher (64,100) because the troops were, again, only in charge of overall security.

The DG ISPR further added that the 2013 elections had been difficult security-wise because of the ongoing war against militancy. Many politicians had received death threats and an Awami National Party (ANP) leader had even been killed. To counter the prevailing insecurity, 75,000 troops had been deployed for 70,185 polling stations, Gen Ghafoor recalled.

The ECP must balance out the anti-establishment narrative with the inefficient institutions narrative and ensure that the armed forces don’t have an excessively visible role to play in the elections to curb antiestablishment criticism.  

He also explained that this time around, the ECP has entrusted the Army with six tasks:

1. Maintenance of overall security in the country.
2. Provision of security to printing presses.
3. Transportation of the material before Election Day.
4. Transportation of material from RO office to polling stations as well as security of polling staff on polling day.
5. Deployment on polling day inside and outside polling stations.
6. Securely transporting election material and polling staff back to Election Commission offices.

There are a few political leaders who accuse the ‘establishment’ of pre-poll rigging. The DG ISPR responded to some very tough questions on the subject. The DG said that “how is it possible to tell 106m people who to vote for?” he asked. “How is it possible that we secretly tell [around] 350,000 troops that ‘you should do this’?”

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The most upsetting phenomenon in Pakistan these days is that mainstream political parties insinuate that, so-called establishment is helping the PTI to manage an electoral win. The parties are conveniently ignoring the fact that people will vote on the basis of their performance and not on the advice of the men-in-uniform.

If this trend continues, it is likely that the elections results will largely become controversial which will pose serious threat to the legitimacy of the government in-office.