|
|
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.
|
Tags
You must be logged in to add tags.
|
Writer Profile
Hassan Nasir Mirbahar
Working in a Pakistani NGO; main concentration of my work is on good governance, political participation, election observation and human rights.
|
Comments
You must be a TakingITGlobal member to post a comment. Sign up for free or login.
|
|
