We, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), would like to congratulate the nation on the completion of the freest, fairest and loveliest election of all time. The election was as free as biryani being distributed by a rich seth during Ramzan, with hordes of people all across the country lining up for it. The election was so fair all brown people felt inferior to it. If it was any fairer, Pakistanis would have thought the election was Jeremy McLellan and started worshipping it. The European Union also commended the ECP: “The election was fair. Almost zero tan lines.”

It was also the most secure and safe election ever. It was as secure as a website protected by a proxy server. The ECP obviously focused on making the major provinces and the major candidates more secure. We know how the news media works — it is only newsworthy if people from a major party die in major cities. The good thing is that Imran Khan did not fall from anywhere this time around — except of course in the eyes of a lot of his initial supporters.

We were well aware that a lot of videos were made in 2013 of rigging, ballot stuffing and irregularities at polling stations during the voting process. We eradicated that problem altogether by not allowing people to make videos during the voting process — much like clothes, for ballot papers daagh toh achay hotay hain.

We even reaffirmed our belief in conservation and environmentalism by recycling ballot papers. Only one side of the ballot paper was used for the voting process so we left them at various schools as a surprise gift for incoming students. They could use the empty side of the ballot papers to draw up pictures of the great Imran Khan riding a white horse towards prosperity. The best drawing will win our new ECP flag.

We even utilised the software used by ride hailing and food delivery apps to deliver results. Much like those apps, our delivery times were imaginary and the promise of delivery speculative. You ordered nuggets from McDonalds? Well, we feel like delivering you school shoes from English Boot House so guess what you are having for lunch?

Eventually we simply used the Tinder method for the app. We swiped on the candidates we liked, we copy pasted the same pick up line and soon after sent them a wildly inappropriate picture of our electoral process. It was the picture of our pick for the winner — I believe teens these days call it a pick pic.

We do not understand the complaints about delayed results. We have never had a problem with delayed results before. People appreciate things they get after waiting a lot more. We just wanted to give our nation the sabr ka meetha phal.

The counting took long but it was a thorough process. We hired the Count from Sesame Street to count all the votes manually. He counted them 1, 2, 3, 4 ... but then he would get distracted and have to start again. Mr Count never learnt counting above a thousand so we had to just make up the numbers after that. If your party won a polling station close by, it probably won the next one too. Let’s just give it to them and go home. We were forced to do this as Mr Count was struggling with the large number of votes. Mr Count could only count a small number of votes hence the only votes he could count accurately were Jibran Nasir’s.

We announced the results with the confidence of a 13 year old pretending he has a girlfriend that nobody can meet because she lives in Islamabad. We could have announced the results earlier if we wanted to but why spoil the suspense? Delaying it allowed us to stay relevant for another couple of days and milk the media’s attention.

We could have announced the results the next day. We could have announced them an hour after polls closed. Heck, we could have announced them a week before the elections.

Not like we were making the decisions.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

Yours truly,

ECP

This article is part of the Herald's satire series titled 'Newsbite', originally published in the September 2018 issue. To read more, subscribe to the Herald in print.