The 1970s elections were also called free and fair but the losing party had not accepted the results. But this is all that everyone knows. What many people do not know is the stories of many individuals who were part of the bigger picture of the elections; these stories were unseen and unheard by people all over the world.
In August 2006, I relocated myself from my native home town, Khairpur (located in Sindh province), to Islamabad, the federal capital of Pakistan. I have joined a new organization, a national NGO, Cavish. Upon joining, my office sent me to attend a meeting which was taking place at the office of an international NGO, The Asia Foundation. Before joining this job, I had visited Islamabad only twice in my 23 years of life and was trying to get accustomed to the local environment and learning to navigate the town. I did not know many people in Islamabad. With the help of a colleague, I reached this meeting place. I was quite nervous and had my own fears about this meeting because I was not really used to these kinds of meetings and had little or no information on what this meeting was all about.
Before joining this, I was engaged in adult literacy initiatives at the grassroots level with communities in Sindh and this was far away from these kinds of meetings. Entering the room, I saw only two people inside and soon there was a rush of many people belonging to different NGOs. The arrival of these people increased my nervousness; what made me more uncomfortable was the different talks.
In a few minutes time the meeting began. A staff member from the host organization started a Power Point presentation on what the meeting was all about, following a welcome. There was a host of English terminology used in this presentation which I was not very familiar with; this further increased my level nervousness. Once the presentation was over, the host asked everyone to share their opinions and comments on what was suggested in the presentation. This meeting and a series of other meetings which followed helped us, over thirty NGOs of Pakistan, form Pakistan’s first domestic election observation network – yes, the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN). It was a major learning experience for me.
The FAFEN was created to be a pressure group in Pakistan for promoting electoral reforms and democratic values in the country by observing elections, doing voters’ education and advocating for electoral and democratic reforms. There were many people in the town– Islamabad- and around the country who would ask why we needed domestic election observation when international observers came to observe the elections each time.
The answer was simple. The international observers mostly come to observe elections one or a few weeks before elections and mainly observe election-day activities; on the contrary elections are a process which has many activities in the pre-election and post-election days. So for complete election observation, these three (pre-election-day, election-day and post election-day) phases are observed. And FAFEN was to do this all over the country in a systematic and scientific way. The task was really huge, so huge that many of us could not be sure we would be able to achieve it. But the passion and determination of all the people involved in this work was really a catalyst.
FAFEN was able to accomplish the objectives it set. It has observed the display period of Pakistan’s first computerized electoral rolls. During the display period, the Election Commission of Pakistan had published the draft electoral lists through out country so that people could come to check if their names were on electoral rolls and file applications for the correction of credentials and/ or the registering of their names. FAFEN had observed this process through almost 750 observers across the country and had actually conducted a survey of the list to check its completeness in various dimensions. FAFEN was the only network which did this exercise and “Flawed but fixable – Draft Electoral Rolls 2007”, a comprehensive report based on the analysis of this observation and survey was the outcome of this whole work.
Following this, the next big task that FAFEN took was to prepare for pre-election and election-day observation following the announcement of elections in Pakistan. FAFEN had election observers in each district and constituency of Pakistan. These people were given training on observing the process of the filing of nomination papers by candidates and the election-campaigns run by them. Through this process, FAFEN was able to issue 19 updates on this pre-election observation. These updates were appreciated by all people from all walks of life and by the international community for their quality and consistency.
Besides all this, efforts were undertaken to hire people for Election Day observation and to train them in the methodology. There were 20, 000 people that FAFEN hired and trained to observe election-day in each constituency of the country. FAFEN faced many difficulties in this big task yet it was able to complete its observation on election-day. Among all the domestic and international groups observing Elections 2008 in Pakistan, FAFEN was the first one to give the election update on polling day (Feb 18) on the environment in which the elections were taking place. It was also first observation group to issue its preliminary election observation report on 19th Feb 2008. Many international and other domestic observation groups and news papers quoted observations from FAFEN’s preliminary observation report.
Many people told me that our observers did not have any impact on making the election process free, fair and transparent. But I must mention here that, being an observer myself, I visited many polling stations on the election day. As I entered into the polling station, the polling staff would try to discipline everything; the security officials deployed at the polling station would come to their positions to maintain security and everyone there would be alert trying not to do anything against the law. We had 20, 000 observers, and many of them were present at a single polling station for the entire day. So if a five minute visit to the polling station could bring discipline, the full-day presence of observers would have made a greater impact than that.
While the above are all FAFEN’s achievements, which were noticed by many people within and outside Pakistan, there were many achievements of FAFEN which remained unnoticed. And this is where my writing begins: I spent my 23 years of life in complete disconnection and disillusionment with Pakistan’s political system. This is, of course, true for most Pakistani youth like me, because we remained frustrated by the poor political system and the way politicians have performed in Pakistan. However, I became a part of FAFEN and it started to affect a change on my attitude to politics in 2005, when I had become involved in the series of training sessions for political parties’ workers organized by National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) in Pakistan.
Whereas the workshops, which my then-employer – again an NGO Indus Resource Center (IRC) – asked me to document, initiated this process of change in my attitude by giving me basic knowledge about politics and democracy; the FAFEN strengthened this process and brought it to the next phase. Working with FAFEN, I learnt many new dimensions associated with politics and democracy and how they – politics and democracy – could become a system for human development and for the development of nations at large. I learnt that if we wanted to bring change to our country, the establishment of free and fair elections was the road map to it. FAFEN played its role in the larger issue of holding free and fair elections in Pakistan by becoming one of the key pressure groups. Moreover, it became a force in facilitating the process by which many people, like me, realized the importance of voting by involving them in this process and doing voters’ education activities across Pakistan.
Having gotten involved in FAFEN, I started reading different books, articles and informative material available on the elections in Pakistan, democracy and election observation. I kept on regularly visiting the websites of IRI, NDI and other organizations to quench my thirst to learn more about politics, democracy and election observation. Besides, I would engage in discussions with my friends, colleagues and relatives to learn their perspectives on the subject. I started to lobby with my near and dear ones to sensitize them to the importance of casting their votes in the Pakistani elections. I was myself desperately waiting for the day to come so that I could go and vote. I had actually become more concerned about everything that was taking place in the country, and was now closely connected to political and democratic activities of country.
All my involvement in FAFEN’s work brought me to the conclusion that ‘ultimate change has to come through a peaceful political and democratic process and change’. I am very happy that I got this chance to become part of FAFEN and to carry out the activities of election observation and other work that FAFEN did. I have really become passionate about working for the promotion of electoral and democratic reforms. And I thank FAFEN for inculcating this change in me. I want to thank everyone in FAFEN and the international community for their technical and other support to FAFEN. Nevertheless, this is just my story; there are many stories of thousands of individuals who were involved in FAFEN in one way or another; and FAFEN has brought changes in their lives.
They say countries/ nations change, one person at a time; the world must note that Pakistan is changing.
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