THE RITUAL OF ELECTIONS IN PAKISTAN (1970-2018)

Writing on the eve of Pakistan’s twelfth general election scheduled for February 2024, the author narrates, analyzes and reflects on all the eleven general elections which have preceded it. The narrative is an easy-flowing blend of history and empirical data. The book provides user-friendly access to the Gallup & Gilani Index of Electoral Record, which is a carefully crafted data set consisting of the voting history of the nearly three hundred million Pakistanis who have ever turned up to vote since 1970. In addition, the book provides access to a Gallup Gilani compiled census of Pakistan’s political class. The census lists and informs on the size of the vote banks and the party affiliations of more than 8,000 members of this class who contested elections to the National Assembly since 2002. Going beyond objective data and historical facts, the author reflects on why elections alone do not deliver democracy and good government. He proposes restructuring Pakistan’s electoral geography by creating 40 sub-provinces as new platforms of political power and authority. The author’s prognosis is that the unmet power-sharing aspirations of a new political class have sparked Pakistan’s current political crisis. He believes they deserve to be listened to and provided with new and numerous platforms of political authority as the existing ones are too few and already overcrowded by the deserving and the undeserving.