The ECP must engage experts and should emulate models of successful countries for better results
LAHORE: Since independence, the country’s political structure has been in the doldrums. Every election has witnessed severe irregularities and discrepancies, except perhaps the 1970 polls. This shows the fragile image of Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) over decades. Considering all the uncertainties in previous elections, the commission officials envisage 2018 election more transparent and different from previous ones owing to addition of several amendments. Numerous state-of-the-art technologies have been introduced for the upcoming election, which encompass result management system through which all the results will be available within 14 days after the election.
Following the 2013 election, every party had serious apprehensions over election manipulation; even the wining party had the same stance. No one accepted the election was free and fair.
To overcome this, the ECP must engage experts and should emulate models of successful countries for better results. It should come up with effective accountability mechanism to alleviate the level of inconsistences and rigging. To ward off the threat of pre-poll rigging, unequivocal guidelines must be there which bind candidates to follow and castigate them to use funds for pending development works. Secondly, it seems to be daunting task to manage the election in four provinces simultaneously. Therefore, the ECP might take some mandatory steps for province-wise elections because conducting election in the whole country on the same day is an insurmountable task.
One hopes this time the ECP would take all the pre-requisites to make this process more transparent and different from previous contests acceptable to everyone.
Haider Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, March 25th, 2018.
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