ECP cagey about publishing details of MPs’ assets

Asks govt to amend laws to include a specific provision for releasing data online

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is reluctant to comply with the request of a parliamentary body on electoral reform and wants specific legislation before it publishes details of lawmakers’ assets on its website.

The existing law makes it binding on every elected member of the National Assembly and provincial legislature to voluntarily make a declaration of their assets every year before the voter supervisory body.

However, instead of improving the system, the ECP has opted to make it obscure as it has stopped the practice of making these statements public through its website.



The practice was stopped upon the insistence of some lawmakers. It also erased from its website the statements of lawmakers for 2012-13 and 2013-14. These unnamed members argued that publishing of their assets’ details on the website would make them vulnerable to criminals.

The decision provoked an outcry on the media and later Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had to intervene. Dar, who is also head of a bipartisan parliamentary committee on electoral reforms, asked the ECP to put the assets’ details back on its website.

In his address to nation on April 22, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also announced that the ECP had put asset statements of the MPs back on its website. However, the ECP had actually not done so. Last week, Dar once again requested the ECP secretary to display the lawmakers’ details.

However, sources say the ECP is reluctant to do so and has asked government to amend section 42A of Representation of Peoples Act and Section 25A of Senate Elections Act, 1975 and to include a specific provision, which should elaborate that the ECP should put asset details of MPs on its website.

Officials claimed that current law only stipulates that the commission should publish these statements in the official gazette and there is no mention of putting them on any website. Interestingly, there was also no legal provision available when the ECP started putting asset details on its website two years back.

It is even more interesting that Free and Fear Election Network (Fafen) – a non-government organisation – has these asset details on its website.



Lawmakers not filing details

There are still around half a dozen lawmakers who have not submitted statements of their assets with the ECP even seven months after lapse of the deadline.

The ECP, last month released hard copies of asset statements of members of National Assembly and Senate. These statements were for the year 2014-15.

Financial year 2015-16 is ending after one and a half month but the ECP is yet to make public asset statements of members of four provincial assemblies for the last year.

Sources said the delay is because of some unruly members –six from Sindh Assembly and one from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) – who are yet to file their statements. Due date for filing annual asset statements for all lawmakers is September 30 each year.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 8^th, 2016.