[Dawn] THE campaigning in the run-up to Saturday and the voting on election day were generally orderly but allegations of rigging were aplenty as the results poured in.To an extent, the complaints may be due to the misplaced confidence of the defeated party but the clamour is loud enough to call for an impartial inquiry. The admirers of retired Justice Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim -- this writer being one of them -- must feel quite hurt that such widespread charges should have arisen with a man of his reputation as the chief election commissioner.
He and his colleagues on the commission -- all retired judges -- were chosen by the president on the recommendation of the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, and approved by a parliamentary committee in which the treasury and opposition were both represented. There could hardly have been any other safeguard to ensure the non-partisan character of the commission.
Yet rigging could have taken place, and has perhaps, and the five ageing, retired judges could do little to prevent the tampering with the ballot at thousands of polling stations across the country. They could not have done much. The confidence reposed by the politicians and the people in the commission to organise fair and transparent polls was wholly misplaced.
The undeniable reality is that polls are conducted and supervised by a hierarchy of executive officials ranging from teachers and constables to the chief secretary and the inspector general of the police. In no way do these officials feel answerable to the Election Commission of Pakistain (ECP) which has seldom detected or punished an official for defying its rules. It has not the means to do it.
Reshuffling the officials at the top or even in the middle tier on the eve of elections hardly makes any difference to the polls being fair, because the integrity or political neutrality of officials is hardly a criterion in the reshuffle.
It is just replacing one with another. Woefully, the standards both of personal ethics and commitment to a code of conduct among the officials have been steadily declining because the principle of merit has been progressively abandoned in their recruitment, placement and promotion.