The Democratic Defiance

Why Pakistanis Refuse to Surrender the Vote

The queues formed again today in Sambriyal. Voters lined up at 185 polling stations across PP-52 constituency, many knowing full well their choices would likely be rendered meaningless by evening. This scene, repeated countless times since February's general elections, poses a question that goes to the heart of democratic theory: What compels citizens to participate in elections when the outcome is predetermined?

The evidence of systematic electoral fraud in Pakistan is no longer debatable. When Rawalpindi Division commissioner Liaquat Ali Chattha resigned in February and publicly confessed to rigging elections in his jurisdiction, he provided rare official testimony to what independent observers had already documented. Post-election audits revealed vote tallies so distorted they bordered on the absurd, candidates declared winners despite receiving 37,000 fewer votes than their opponents. The irregularities were so blatant that the U.S. House of Representatives felt compelled to pass a resolution demanding investigations by a margin of 368 to 7.

Yet today in Sialkot, citizens participated anyway. Early tallies show familiar patterns: PML-N's Hina Arshad leading with over 61,000 votes while PTI's Fakhir Ghumman trails with 32,000, amid reports of polling agent expulsions and police interference that mirror February's documented irregularities. The question persists, why do they bother?

The answer reveals something profound about the relationship between citizens and democracy that transcends immediate electoral outcomes. Pakistani voters are not naive participants in political theater; they are strategic actors engaged in long-term institutional resistance.

Consider the temporal framework within which these citizens operate. A generation that witnessed multiple military coups understands the distinction between flawed democracy and no democracy. The elderly voters shuffling to polling stations today remember when ballot boxes simply didn't exist, when political expression was criminalized, when the very infrastructure of democratic participation was dismantled. From this perspective, even rigged elections represent institutional space worth defending.

More significantly, February's elections demonstrated that authentic popular preference can, initially, overwhelm the machinery of manipulation. When PTI-backed independents appeared to lead in over 120 constituencies on election night, it proved that massive voter turnout can strain fraudulent systems beyond their capacity for credible adjustment. The subsequent "correction" of results only occurred after an unprecedented halt in vote countin, itself evidence that the system reached its operational limits.

This creates a strategic calculus that rational actors might pursue. Electoral fraud requires extensive coordination across hundreds of polling stations, thousands of personnel, and multiple administrative levels. The logistics become exponentially more complex as voter participation increases. Citizens understand this arithmetic and use it to their advantage, forcing authorities to reveal the true extent of institutional capture.

There is also the matter of constitutional obligation. Pakistan's founding document enshrines democratic participation as both right and responsibility. Mass abstention would constitute implicit acceptance of constitutional breakdown, a surrender of legal framework that took decades to establish and would take generations to restore. Continued participation maintains the constitutional fiction that elections matter, preserving legal structures that may eventually be reclaimed.

International dimensions matter as well. Congressional resolutions, European Union statements, and election monitoring missions only materialize when citizens participate in sufficient numbers to make fraud visible. Electoral boycotts would eliminate external pressure and provide authoritarian actors with the legitimacy cover they desperately need. Pakistani voters understand they are performing not just for domestic audiences but for international observers whose attention depends on their continued engagement.

Perhaps most importantly, electoral participation preserves democratic culture at the grassroots level. Campaign rallies, candidate debates, voter education drives, and local organizing efforts represent authentic political engagement regardless of whether final tallies are honored. These preliminary democratic exercises maintain civic knowledge and political networks that survive electoral theft. Citizens vote not just for immediate representation but to preserve institutional memory and organizational capacity for future democratic restoration.

This analysis should not romanticize what is fundamentally a tragic situation. Pakistani citizens face an impossible choice between fraudulent democracy and authoritarian consolidation. Their continued participation represents remarkable civic resilience, but it also highlights the failure of institutions designed to protect democratic rights.

The PP-52 by-election offers another data point in this ongoing experiment. Each fraudulent election tests the sustainability of a system that operates in complete opposition to popular will. Citizens continue voting because surrendering electoral space would guarantee permanent democratic death. But their patience is not infinite, nor should it be.

The real question emerging from Sambriyal is not why Pakistanis continue to vote despite systematic fraud, but how long democratic institutions can survive such fundamental illegitimacy. Every stolen election brings that reckoning closer. In the meantime, citizens vote, not out of naivety, but as an act of democratic defiance in the face of institutional collapse.

Their queues today represent the last line of defense for constitutional governance. The tragedy is that this defense should be necessary at all.