A woman casting her vote in Islamabad | Tanveer Shahzad, White Star
This was perhaps the most expensive election in Pakistan’s history, mainly due to an excessive use of television for publicity campaigns by political parties. The Election Commission of Pakistan says it has taken note of the high-cost television advertisements and these were being monitored during the election but there is little that it can do beyond that.
The Elections Act, 2017 provides that a National Assembly candidate cannot spend more than four million rupees on canvassing voters. The expense limit for a provincial assembly candidate is two million rupees. Most of the candidates, however, spent way more than these amounts and sometimes out of sheer necessity. For instance, polling staff refused to entertain voters unless they brought a slip carrying their vote number and other identification details. These slips were available at the camps run by various candidates and often the expense on setting up these camps alone could have approached the expense limits imposed by the law.
To reduce election expenses so that people of modest means could also join the electoral race, the Supreme Court of Pakistan had issued a verdict in June 2012 on a petition filed by Abid Hassan Minto. The verdict had restricted candidates to use only a specially opened bank account for making all election-related expenses. The amount of money spent through this account could not exceed the relevant expense limit given in the law.
In theory, this restriction allows the Election Commission of Pakistan to monitor a candidate’s expenditure more easily than it could earlier. One, however, doubts if effective mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that no expenses are made from other accounts or by other individuals on behalf of a candidate. It is generally believed that a large number of candidates succeed in concealing their actual election expenses by making them through other persons and, for a variety of reasons, the Election Commission of Pakistan is unable and incapable of proceeding against the offenders.
The election expenses of a candidate under the law do include, in addition to money spent by himself, “the expenses incurred by any person or a political party on behalf of the candidate”. A candidate is required to include in his expense account any expenditure incurred by a friend/supporter on “stationery, postage, advertisement, transport, or for any other item”. But these limitations are yet to be enforced fully.
Where the law is almost silent is on money spent by political parties on their collective campaigning. Unfortunately, the authors of the Elections Act, 2017 did not heed persistent public demand for putting in specific restrictions on election-related expenses incurred by political parties which tend to believe they are free to spend as much money as they can on advertising and other propaganda material. They also think that they do not have to worry much about the sources that money is generated from.
In a broader sense, however, they are not as free in making these expenses as they may like to believe. Each year, they are required to submit their audited accounts showing their annual income and expenditure, sources of funds, and assets and liabilities. They are also required to submit to the Election Commission of Pakistan details of their expenses during a general election as well as the names of all those who have given them 100,000 rupees or more for an election campaign.
Although the language of the relevant section of the Elections Act, 2017 – Section 211 – is somewhat obscure, in as much as it does not refer to the total amount of contributions received by a political party, it should be possible for the Election Commission of Pakistan to ascertain how much money a party had before an election and how much money it acquired for its election campaign and from where.
Given the various shortcomings of the election law, it is also not possible to proceed against extravagant candidates/parties. What, however, can still be done is that information about all campaign expenses should be made public in order to increase the level of electoral transparency. People should know how the means of ruling over them have been acquired.