A radical shift was, however, introduced in the voters’ list, recently announced by the ECP.
KARACHI: The 2008 elections were conducted largely on the basis of people voting from the polling stations located close to what was stated as their “current address” on the CNIC. A radical shift was, however, introduced in the voters’ list, recently announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). By some stroke of magic (or mischief), a very large number of voters have been assigned their polling stations based on their “permanent addresses” instead of their “current addresses”.
This single error alone has disenfranchised almost three million voters in Karachi and some other towns of Sindh. Clearly an error of this magnitude could not have happened without the connivance of a significantly important number of officials within the ECP. It amounts to subverting the entire electoral process and make it look ‘unfair and not so lovely’.
Why is the ECP quiet on this subject? Why has the ECP not investigated this massive error? Why is the ECP reinventing its own electoral lists? Why does the ECP not use the NADRA CNIC lists and the “current address” as the default address for all voters? These and many other questions give rise to fears that the ECP is well on its way to repeat its past lacklustre performance.
Naeem Sadiq
Published in The Express Tribune, November 14th, 2012.
