Electoral body takes rare swipe at govt

ISLAMABAD: Elections in Pakistan have seen their fair share of controversy in the past, but on Wednesday even the country’s top electoral body cast doubt on the government’s intentions to ensure the credibility of the upcoming parliamentary polls.

For the first time, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) criticised the government directly for its apparent lack of seriousness about enacting much-needed electoral reforms before the general elections due to be held next year.

In an official handout issued after an ECP meeting on Wednesday, the commission admitted that it would be compelled to hold the next elections with existing delimitation after being informed by the statistics department that the final report of the long overdue population census will be ready by April next year.
“It seems the government is not serious at all about finalising the new electoral laws. This is going to create a lot of problems for the 2018 general elections,” the handout quoted the chief election commissioner (CEC) as saying.

Officials of ECP had earlier been sharing concerns with the government through official channels. This is first time the CEC has come up with such hard hitting public statement.

Chief Census Commissioner Asif Bajwa informed the meeting, held at the ECP headquarters to discuss delimitations for the upcoming polls, that the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) would publish final data of this year’s population census by April next year. The development put ECP on a hook, officials said. Under the law, ECP can conduct new delimitations only after it receives final report of census data and maps from PBS.

“Unless we are provided final data, we cannot go for delimitations. We will be compelled to conduct next elections due in July, August next year with existing delimitations,” CEC Justice (retd) Sardar Muhammad Raza told the meeting.

Existing delimitations – though revised for general elections in 2002, 2008 and 2013 – were primarily based on the 1998 population census. Many demographic changes would have taken place by next general elections if they would be conducted on the basis of primary statistics that would date back almost two decades by next year.

Bajwa offered to provide provisional data to ECP by July this year but the CEC rejected this, saying the law requires complete and final data before ECP can mark new boundaries for constituencies.

It was also expected that parliament would have passed the proposed electoral reforms package that contains dozens of new laws to improve archaic election system of the country by now. But parliamentary panel constituted for this purpose in August 2014 has yet to finalise its work.

The committee was supposed to bring new legislative package in parliament within three months of its first meeting. Government claims the package is ‘almost’ ready for legislation, but has yet to present it before parliament.

ECP had written to the government warning that long delay would jeopardise all its plans to make the next elections credible. ECP was to begin training hundreds of thousands of government employees who would perform duties in the next elections from next month. This appears impossible now since ECP is not sure if it should train election staff according to existing laws or the new ones.

Under the proposed laws, ECP should complete all necessary preparations, like delimitations, complete polling scheme etc at least six months before the polls. It takes ECP almost seven months to conduct delimitations. Had ECP started it now, it could have been completed by early next year.

Source: The Express Tribune