No Country for Young Voters?

As we continue to live in times undefined by law, with the Constitution practically held in abeyance, the anxiety over what comes next seems to be growing by the day. It could have been very different, of course. After all, there is little about our current situation that our forefathers, the writers of our Constitution, had not anticipated.

An elected parliament completes its term, a fresh election is called, political parties return to the electorate, an empowered election commission does the necessary groundwork and, in a matter of just 90 days, we have a spanking new government in office, armed with a fresh mandate and a clear-cut agenda of pulling Pakistan out of its economic mess.

Oddly, though, none of this seems to be happening. With a date for the next election still up in the air, and the only certainty being that any possibility of sticking to the Constitutional diktat is now firmly out of the window, it won’t be amiss to take a look at what all the stakeholders are up to in these uncertain times.

The caretaker government, ignoring its limited mandate as well as its legal inability to finance itself beyond its stipulated period of 90 days, has everything other than timely elections on its radar: crackdown on electricity theft, smuggling of currency and commodities, deporting illegal immigrants from the country, and worrying about how to speed up the process of selling off family silver, to name a few. Our caretaker prime minister says he is clear that things need to change now but mention the word elections and all his clarity disappears.

But he can take solace in the fact that he isn’t the only one around struggling for clarity – on elections, that is. Our political parties don’t seem to be faring any better.

Having quietly agreed to notify the latest census, completely aware that it will force the Election Commission to overstep the constitutional deadline, the PPP has suddenly woken up to the 90-day constitutional requirement. However, its demand for “timely elections” comes dovetailed with unexplained concerns over a skewed playing field, with no one quite sure who the audience for this lament may be.

The other big contender for our deeply troubled throne, Imran Khan’s PTI, still seems to be in the process of mopping up what is left of itself after its suicidal outing on May 9. With its leader’s electoral future smothered by a plethora of court cases, there is hardly anyone left in the party to take care of critical pre-electoral issues of finalising candidates, organising an election campaign, and ensuring all attendant requisites are in place ahead of polling day.

This brings us to what many insist is the most important player in the current scenario: the former prime minister’s PMLN. Having struggled for a few weeks with finding the right narrative, it now seems to have pretty much given up on anything more specific than “Nawaz Sharif is returning to set everything right”. It’s quite meek, especially given that the ‘how’ part is completely missing from this narrative, if indeed it can even be called that.

Curiously, none of the parties have so far shown any interest in explaining how they plan to address the key question in voters’ mind: how will things be set right? We have run out of money, and even the option to borrow is contingent upon our commitment to tax retail, property and agriculture, sell off loss-making SOEs and subject all state institutions to the kind of financial discipline that has so far been alien to their operations. So, it is no longer a question of who, but of how. All we have heard on this front from our political players, the established ones as well as the new kids on the block like Istehkam Party and PTI Parliamentarians, is a deathly silence.

Some might argue that our political parties have never been clear about their economic agenda prior to an election so why should we expect anything different now. But that argument is fatally ignorant of a new reality that our latest census has shown us a glimpse of. The next elections, whenever they are held, will see a whopping 20 million new voters – all aged between 18 and 22 – who are neither too aware of our political history nor too enamoured of whatever sacrifices our brave politicians may have made in the past.

They need answers, which just do not seem to be forthcoming. True, even in the most developed democracies, people’s electoral choices are driven as much by emotion as by rationality. But in our current situation, our politicians seem to be struggling to bring either into play. One wonders then, which way this young, eager, and desperate lot will look come polling day.