Time for Electronic Voting

I feel sorry for Hakeemullah Mehsud. To his utter dismay (as if he cares), people went out to vote and made the current elections a milestone in Pakistani history. The bloodiest of all elections , the turnout was more than ever before (around 60%) in which Pakistanis of all hues and color took active part. PML (N) stole the spotlight overall whereas PTI made history in KPK. In all this environment of festiveness, competitiveness, ugliness on social networks, fights amongst party workers, violence, bomb blasts and rigging concerns - One thing was for sure; Pakistanis went all out to show the world that they are the really the bravest lot in the world.

One aspect that kept raising its head was rigging and it seems that it will take quite a while where this issue attains a low profile. Now that the elections are over, lets discuss now how can the next election process can be made more transparent.

1 - Elections Under Army Supervision.

Now, this one makes me uncomfortable. Yes, Army is the most powerful institution but come election day, where do you see them apart from the TVs? They are no where to be honest. Also, living in Karachi, I have come to this conclusion that Rangers are just figurine of people in army fatigue; completely useless and just a drain on the finances. So why give them more importance by calling them every time in elections? I say No to army for elections.

2 - Electronic Voting

Now this gets me more buzzing. Voting through electronic means indicates a natural evolutionary step. I do not know how many countries go through elections by electronic means but I do know that ECP and Nadra have a service called 8300 that has all my electoral data! That is a huge step ahead. So what measures can be adopted? Let’s examine.

a) SMS Based Voting

If ECP/ Nadra has all my voting credentials, why not registering one further info? My cell phone number. This would be the number officially registered with ECP/ Nadra which could be used as an authentication of my being a genuine voter. Bogus voting would require someone snatching or sending a vote through my phone without my knowledge to the ECP database. Still better than the scenario wherein you are being forced to vote by peer pressure (the person standing alongside you forcing you to vote for a certain party). The voting can be SMS based or App based. The communication can be encrypted as well as the database. All political parties can be made aware of the security mechanism for credential and data protection adopted.

The trouble would be that only people of the urban areas would be more inclined to this mode of voting, people of rural areas might not have the knowledge/ interest of using this facility - or the fact that they do not have a mobile phone for that matter. Other issues could be ECP server overload, communication signal strength or no signal at all or IT based attack of Denial of Service (DoS).

b) Electronic Booth Voting

The issue of mobile phone availability, signal strength or the issue of difficulty of usage of electoral means through it can be addressed by Electronic Voting Booths.  Here, the voting machines would be connected to the electoral database and by keying in your CNIC, your electoral credentials will appear. Select the candidate and your vote will be locked.

This will obviously of no help considering the fact that in the current mode of manual voting, person standing alongside you belonging to a political party forces you to vote for someone of their choice. Also, procuring machines in such a large number for all the polling stations would be a hugely expensive exercise.

What can be done is that polling stations can be reduced. The cost of manning polling stations and printing the ballot papers would be reduced. The voting machine can be placed in secured selected spots easily accessible where people can go and poll. There will be no issue of separate electoral list for every polling station because the electoral lists would be centralized.  If voters of a certain area do get blocked out because of the high handedness of any political party workers, any machine can be utilized to vote. The only issue would be to make people reach that machine and that would be a real problem for voters.

Electronic voting can reduce the instances of rigging – forcing people to vote for someone, stuffing ballot boxes, influencing polling staff, taking over the election material. It obviously cannot remove rigging but it sure can make elections in Pakistan more transparent to the satisfaction of people. ECP can opt for any one or a combination of the above for conducting the next general elections.

As for Hakeemullah, any news of his implosion yet?

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Gul Makai in Timbaktu

Yesterday was a very bad day. Nothing happened to me but you never know. God forbid. Two reports that came out yesterday really hammered in hard the fact that Islam today is being eaten by a cancer and that it requires therapy on urgent basis.

Who, Where & Why - I

A 14 year old girl, Malala Yousafzai, was shot in Swat yesterday. Her shooters? Messers Taliban and Co. Why? because '"She was pro-West, she was speaking against Taliban and she was calling President Obama her ideal leader... She was young but she was promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas." Ehsanullah Ehsan, Taliban Spokesman, said by telephone from an undisclosed location. And people actually praise the Taliban? They shot an unarmed 'teen girl' just to settle the scores? That is an insult to religion, chivalry, Pushtun culture and humanity and everything in between. Malala used to write a personal blog on BBC under the name of Gul Makai in which she described Taliban atrocities and lamented the lack of education facilities for girls under their rule.

She did that when she was only 11 years old and Taliban ruled the valley of Swat terrorizing its people and inflicting misery upon them through their strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law. In recognition of her courage, she was awarded the First National Peace Award by the Pakistani Govt. She was also nominated for International Children's Peace Prize in 2011. 

Who, Where & Why - II

The place is called Timbaktu. Its a city in the west african nation of Mali. Do you know it holds a special place in muslim civilization? Timbaktu became the London of Africa in 12th century when it was the trade route of salt, gold, ivory and slaves. It had the Sankore Madrassa which was the largest library of its time containing precious books. It could house 25,000 students. Timbaktu was the centre of knowledge and still has treasure trove of books dating back to 12th century which contain amongst others Arabic manuscripts, books ranging on topics from Islam, Philosophy, Maths and Astronomy.

Now Timbaktu is in the news because a local Islamic militia 'Ansar Dine' is exerting influence in Mali. They too have a strict interpretation of islamic shariah. They have recently been busy smashing the ancient tombs of Mali calling them idolatry. Deja Vu eh? Correct. Taliban did the same to the famous Bamiyan Buddha statue of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. The tombs are part of International Heritage.

The Who, Why and what the hell?

See the link? Malala Yousafzai and city of Timbaktu are threatened by whom? The same set of ideology. Call them Ansar Dine (Mali), Boko Haram (Nigeria), Shehab (Somalia) or Taliban - they all are of the same creed. They all believe in strict implementation of Islamic sharia law - and that too forcefully. For them, every other person, who does not conform to their point of view, is a non-muslim and hence 'deserves' to be punished. Women are the target of most scorn and education (western that is) will be eradicated as it is a handy work of satan. They will use all the legitimate grievances (lawlessness, crime, poverty, political instability etc) to further their vested interest of gaining power under the name of Islam. They are bunch of criminals and thugs and not the 'pure muslims' they portray themselves to be.

Call me bigoted, but I think the root cause of all them is Salafism. Salafists believe that the teachings at the time of Prophet, people associated with him and society of that time was the best model to be followed.  Every other thing is just heresy. People might argue that salafism is not the problem but Wahhabism is. Call it whatever, this brand of islam does not let the 'other' opinion and has gained militant form.  Let me rephrase - the ideology of salafism, though pure in nature, is currently being held hostage by people whose aim is just to gain power in the garb of Islamic shariah law. This is a cancer which needs to be treated. Islamic societies in general and especially of Pakistan, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, Afghanistan and Mali need to reign in this strand of sunni islam.  Maldives is currently being threatened as well but they have not yet taken hold of it.

People of Pakistan have to rise up to this form of extremism that is creeping up and eating inside out the society of Pakistan. Today it was Malala Yousafzai, someone else's daughter,  Tomorrow it might be yours. Let Malala be the rallying cause for ordinary Pakistanis who want peace and nothing else. She is a special soul, may she be the guiding light of future generations of Pakistanis. May she be the force that changes the mindset of clergy and people who condone acts of Taliban unknowingly and totally being oblivious to the fact that they are committing murder.

Peace.

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