The Judicial Commission formed to probe the PTI’s rigging allegations while exonerating the PMLN of the ‘crime’ had, however, spotlighted a number of deficiencies, flaws, shortcomings, imperfections and inadequacies in the very system of elections.
This had led to a clamour for electoral reforms which in turn had led to the formation of the 33-member parliamentary committee for electoral reforms. The Committee prepared a seemingly comprehensive document in two years’ consultative process for which its sub-committee, headed by Law Minister Zahid Hamid, met for 70 times.
Based on this document the government tabled on 20 Dec. 2016 a draft bill on electoral reforms in the National Assembly. Presenting the draft bill in the house, the chairman of the committee, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had asked authorities concerned for its publication in national dailies besides placing it on the website of the National Assembly for public display of the 149-page draft bill.
He also called upon all concerned, including parliamentary parties, ECP, civil society, lawyers’ organisations and general public to give their suggestions about the document within 30 days so that it could be reviewed and improved in the light of their suggestions.
But so far there has been only a cursory public debate on the draft bill. Political parties, by and large appeared not even to have bothered to read the draft bill what to talk of contributing to an informed debate on the positive/ negative aspects of the bill.
As many as 15 parties having no or only nominal representation in any of elected houses, however, believe the law in its current form only protected the interests of political actors who want to perpetuate status quo.
Indeed, the mainstream politicians seem too content with the substantial increases in the election expenses limits for both National Assembly and provincial assemblies’ seats (to Rs 4 million and Rs 2m from Rs 1.5 m and Re 1, respectively) and also seem too happy that they would not face immediate disqualification for submitting a false statement of election expenses or wealth statement.
The Election Commission according to the draft bill must refer such cases to the session court, which may allow such members to continue their membership until the exhaustion of all appeals. This weakness of the ECP’s powers also conflicts with Section 4(2) of the draft bill, which grants that any direction and order of the Commission shall be treated as it has been given by a high court.
This has transformed the election system itself into what is called the mother of all corruption. In the first place fixing such high limits of election expenses makes it impossible for the less-endowed citizens to contest elections whereby ensuring that the elected houses actually serve as rich men’s clubs.
Secondly, these well-endowed persons invariably indulge in extravagant campaigning, secure in the knowledge that once elected they would be able to more than make up the ‘investment’ by indulging in blatant corruption.
What is equally worrying is that the draft election bill stops short of providing complete independence and authority to the ECP that is needed to ensure an election that is free of government interference. Section 239 of the draft bill is particularly problematic as it enables the Election Commission to “to make rules for carrying out the purposes of this Act,” but only with the approval of the government. The constitution and existing law requires presidential approval for rules, which also compromises the independence of the ECP.
When there is any difficulty in giving effect to any of the provisions of the bill the government will forward such provisions to the parliament, and there is no timeframe for such referrals. This provision is in direct conflict with Section 4 (3), which empowers the Commission to take any measure to do anything for carrying out the purposes of this bill “for which no provision or sufficient provision exists”.
The powers of the Commission are further weakened by inconsistencies in the law regarding disqualification of elected members.
The draft bill also bars access of media, observers and citizens to the scrutiny of candidates during the nomination process, which is a step backwards from the existing laws and compromises the transparency of this critical step in the election process.
The draft bill further fails to impose time requirements on the ECP to make publicly available all of the critical documents: nomination papers, election expense returns by the candidates, election result forms such as polling station vote counts, ballot paper accounts, final consolidation of the result from each constituency, candidate wealth statements.
The draft bill also does not address the issue of political monopolies or prescribe any measures that can dilute control of some families over political parties. And it allows indirect elections to the Senate, which have the potential to allow party leaders to induct members based on nepotism and not merit.
The author is a senior journalist based in Islamabad. He served as the Executive Editor of Express Tribune until 2014.