LG elections: PTI backpedals on biometric voting system

Party says it does not want to delay the process in K-P

ISLAMABAD:

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa (K-P) has decided to go ahead with local government (LG) polls in the province without the biometric voting system (BVS).

According to a party official, PTI chief Imran Khan had given the nod for the democratic exercise without the new system – a demand his party has consistently rallied for since it was swept into power last year.



In an unusual shift, both PTI and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) coalition partners in K-P, backtracked on their long-standing demand that local government (LG) elections should be held using biometric verification machines, saying they did not want to delay the process in the province.

“We’ve decided to hold the local bodies polls under conventional system by April 2015 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa,” said Inayatullah Khan who holds the portfolio of the Local Government and Rural Development Department in the province.

“We have written to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) stating that the K-P government is ready to conduct LG polls by the first week of April,” Inayatullah told The Express Tribune.

With last year’s election marred by accusations of vote fraud, Imran had been pressing election authorities to deploy the ‘biometric system’ to ensure that transparency is upheld during the process.

“Elections have to be held by ECP which has refused using this as a pretext to delay local government polls in Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa,” PTI spokesperson Dr Shireen Mazari told The Express Tribune, defending her party’s stance.

Providing a similar justification, PTI leader Asad Umar said, the provincial government decided to hold elections under the old system “because ECP has been using that [biometric system] as an excuse to delay local bodies’ polls.”

Both PTI and JI want to hold early LG polls in the province, said Inayatullah Khan, who represents JI in the provincial cabinet.

“We want early fair local bodies’ polls, no matter under which system the ECP conducted early elections,” he said.

If we follow the biometric system then we, as told by the ECP, will have to wait until December 2015, he said. “We don’t want to delay the local government polls anymore,” he added.

Commenting on the issue, a senior ECP official said that the poll body had informed the provincial government that it was ready to hold elections under the conventional system by March 2015.

“K-P is taking the lead over Sindh and Punjab—as it looks the province will hold polls by March 2015,” he added.

Earlier this month, an official of the poll supervisory body informed members of the parliamentary panel on electoral reforms that electronic voting machines were just as prone to fraud as traditional polling methods.

According to the minister for local government and rural development in the province, the elections will allow the provincial government to delegate authority to the grass-roots level.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2014.