It does not make any difference who is going to be the next chief election commissioner. The present poor rather corrupt performance of the election commission will continue.

Why?

Here is the reason. When you want to construct a bridge you get a civil engineer for the job. When you need to keep a close eye on your cash flow you assign the job to an accountant. When you want to build machinery you get a mechanical engineer. When you will put an accountant in place of a civil engineer you know what will happen.

Conducting election is a project management type job. You need an administrator with strong project management skills. Every professional mentioned above have necessary education, training and experience. A judge has the education in law and have the experience in the use and interpretation of different clauses and articles of law. That is what he has been doing all along his career. What he knows about project management or administration.

Because our system of governance is so corrupted our decision makers think they need an honest person for conducting the election. To get the job done you need a professional and to circumvent the corruption you need a strong system with strong checks and balances. None of them exists in our present election system.

Do you think an honest accountant can do the job of a civil engineer. Just because he is honest. Honesty has nothing to do with the professional knowledge and experience. Assigning, selecting or electing or nominating a judge as election commissioner will not any good to the election system.

We all have seen what the judge who worked as chief election commissioner previously has delivered. He may be honest but he did not have the management skills.

Our politicians are making that mistake again by putting a judge for the job of chief election commissioner. Some one can say this is what is written in the constitution. Who designed the constitution, the same politicians.

One more idea may be Zardari (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif (PMLN) know better than us how to manipulate the election results so they agree to put this requirement in the constitution. An old retired judge (preferably 70+ years) who don’t have energy left for anything best suits them as chief election commissioner.