Daily Times

For any country, even for a well-established democracy, the legal framework and administrative processes for elections need to be seen as organic, which requires regular review and modification. Effective legal framework and administrative process will allow a compliance with international standards and obligations. It also reflects a broader political need to engage in continuous efforts and to sustain confidence in the efficacy of the democratic system. This can only be done by ensuring that the electoral processes are responsive, inclusive, and aligned with the expectations of all electoral stakeholders.

In Pakistan, despite their differences, there is a recognition amongst stakeholders — local and international — that electoral reforms are required. An initiative was recently taken by the Youth Parliament Pakistan, a project of PILDAT, to draft policy briefs on several issues concerning the general public. This year, one of the five Youth Standing Committees presented its recommendations on electoral and political reforms in Pakistan. Therefore, we have taken this step of publicising our policy briefs, based on the rhetoric that what needs to be done has to be transformed into coherent and judicious action in order to reach out to the literate fraction.

2013 General Elections were considered the first successful democratic transition, however, some parties still had various reservations; concluding the elections as rigged. Many complaints regarding the procedural loopholes were received right after the elections. Some political parties clearly rejected the results while some raised concerns about elections in some constituencies. Complaints such as the politicisation of polling staff and the supply of extra ballot papers to parties were also filed. This emphasises the necessity to ensure fair and transparent elections in 2018. Consequently, five crucial reforms were proposed by the committee members.

About 61.7 percent of Pakistan’s population lives in rural areas, most of which is both uneducated and unaware of its voting rights. Also, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has not taken any measure to date to encourage the voters to exercise their voting rights. The only possibility to discourage people from casting others’ votes is by encouraging people to go to their respective polling stations and cast their own votes. Negligence and unawareness of general public are resulting in rigged and unfair voting. When a large number of people will cast their votes, perhaps, an honest, transparent and fair election will be conducted. This will also curb the common dilemma of winning elections solely by enticing the rural population through short-term benefits. The ECP must use several media of communication to teach the people about the importance of voting and hazards of losing this opportunity. Rallies and awareness campaigns involving non-governmental organisations and volunteers can also prove to be an effective strategy. These outreach programmes should be conducted generally throughout the tenures of governments.

There have been incidences of rigging in every election where voters have casted more than one votes. The strategy that would help in identifying bogus and ghost voting is the introduction of Pilot Run Digital Voting Machines. This would facilitate the ECP with an authenticated maintenance of electoral rolls. The registration process of electoral rolls should be facilitated at the time of the issuance of CNIC and its synchronisation with a unique Voter ID NADRA should update the ID cards with a master chip and an encrypted voter code along with the provision of digital machines installed with full electoral role database. Once the vote has been cast, the machine will decline the card if used another time. In all of this, security is crucial, therefore, in the case of any mishap and loss, polling staff should be penalised.

The regional general election would also help in enhancing the administrative ability of the ECP as well as its effective control and monitoring of pre, during and post-polling procedures over the country. Functioning of approximately 69,000 polling stations makes it extremely lengthy and laborious for the ECP to effectively fulfil its administrative functions on a single day. To maintain the confidentiality of electoral result until the end, we suggest that sealed ballot boxes should be shifted to ECP regional office; and to avoid any chance of tempering during transportation, the staff at the polling station must complete counting and reporting through the smart phone app. After transportation, the returning officer at the regional office can recount and submit a second report through the manual system.

Another recommendation is to regulate campaign expenses and ensure equality among all contesting parties and their candidates. In Pakistan, the Political Parties Order 2002 mainly deal with the campaign finance laws. Representation of People Act ROPA (section 48 to 51) and the code of conduct by political parties and candidates (2013) issued by the ECP set a limit on candidate spending, ie 1 million rupees for provincial assembly seat and 1.5 million rupees for the national assembly seat. Candidates are required to submit details of their election expenses, but the law does not provide a defined procedure for scrutiny of the campaign finance. For this recommendation, parliament should review the spending limit for both kinds of assemblies, electronic media campaigning should be completely banned and clear laws should be introduced to monitor and audit of party funds that are spent on election campaigns, all the party funding should be deposited in a single account and all the party expenses should be made from it only, and independent monitoring cells should be established to keep tabs on election campaigns and could immediately disqualify the candidates who spend more than the set limit.

The last recommendation is to limit the filing of candidature to one constituency only and legalise the punishments for violation of the rule. The absence of such a restriction leads to re-elections in cases where a single candidate wins from more than one constituencies, the expenses of which, in terms of administration and finances, are borne by the ECP. Indeed, the ECP has to be credited for its strenuous dedication and motivation to work for conducting free and fair elections in Pakistan. The reforms we have proposed are innovative and prospective given that a plan to implement is duly designed.

Aminah Suhail Qureshi is a student of Biotechnology with an interest in current affairs, politics and journalism

Afia Khan Yousafzai is a liberal feminist and staunch advocate of human rights in general