It goes without saying that our nation has been punished by both democracy and dictatorship. Though democracy promises basic rights, such as food, shelter, security, law and order, peace, corruption-free environment, equality, merit and justice for all Pakistan, under the democracy we lacked such ideal conditions. We cannot deny that the failure of democracy in Pakistan is due to the lack of competent politicians and their rigged elections. There have been many rigged elections in Pakistan but only the 2013 election has been exposed by retired additional secretary Afzal Khan. According to Article 218 the primarily duty of a caretaker government or incumbent government is to conduct free and fair election.
However the caretaker government failed to do so and the election were manipulated by retired Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in favour of PMLN. As a result people under the aegis of Imran Khan’s PTI and Tahir ul Qadri’s PAT are on the streets of Islamabad to protest against this act. It seems that both Imran Khan and Tahir ul Qadri are playing a positive role and want a real democratic setup. On the other hand majority of corrupt politicians have been howling to protect democracy from long boots.
It was the responsibility of incumbent government to meet the constitutional demands of PTI, which asked for rechecking of 4 seats and PAT’s demand for a fair inquiry of the sad event of Model Town Lahore, but both these demands were ignored. Now we all have to pay a price for this act and especially the PMLN leadership.
MUHAMMAD SUHAIL,
Karachi, August 27.