PHOTO: EXPRESS/FILE
HYDERABAD: The upcoming general elections will hopefully be one of the freest the country has witnessed in the past six and a half decades, said speakers at a conference on ‘Peaceful and Transparent Elections’ organised by Centre for Human Rights and Education and Centre for Peace and Civil Society (CPCS) on Wednesday.
Jami Chandio, the head of CPCS, felt that the poor security situation in Karachi will become a major hindrance in conducting free and fair elections. “The electoral process will be considered unfair if complaints of polling stations being hijacked by armed men surface,” he added, while advising the election commission to ensure that strict security measures were in place while the polls were being conducted.
Dr Ashothama Lohano from Human Rights Commission of Pakistan spoke about the problem of voter displacement in Karachi and Hyderabad. “More than 200,000 residents of Hyderabad have been shifted without their consent to the districts of their permanent addresses,” said a political acitivst, Mehboob Abro. “This has been done even though they have their homes, jobs and business in Hyderabad.”
Officials from the election commission responded to this assertion by claiming that the voters had opted to be registered in their hometowns during the voter registration process carried out in September, 2011.
“A large number of people from Qasimabad taluka registered their votes in the other districts,” said the district election commissioner, Asghar Ali Siyal. Siyal held political parties and activists responsible for the flaws in the delimitation process. “They didn’t raise the issue after the 2008 general elections,” he explained. “It’s not possible for the ECP to carry out this process when there are just few months left in the polls.”
Published in The Express Tribune, March 21st, 2013.
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yeah right.