CEC urges political parties to speed work on poll laws

In letters to all party heads, commissioner says delays will affect reformations in electoral system

ISLAMABAD: Frustrated over inordinate delay in passing the electoral reforms package by parliament, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) has now approached heads of all mainstream political parties warning them that further delay would make conduct of the next general elections under reformed system a challenging task.

Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has also publicly complained it has not released any funds for the general elections due next year, to start mandatory preparations.

Before making public CEC’s correspondence to heads of 15 mainstream political parties that have representation in parliament on Wednesday, ECP after a meeting of its planning committee on Tuesday said it has only been allocated funds for salaries of staff and not a single penny has been released for the preparation of upcoming general polls.



“Meeting was told that ECP has not received any funds for next general elections. We needed funds for polling staff’s training, procurement of CCTV cameras, result management system, biometric machines and other election material” an official handout issued after ECP’s planning penal said.

ECP had requested Rs8.2 billion in the annual budget for the ongoing financial year in order to keep pace with preparations for the next general elections. However, in the budget passed last month, only Rs2.34 billion were sanctioned for ECP an amount of Rs1.29 billion would go to salaries of its employees.

Top poll organising body is not only suffering financial impediments, but delay in passing much talked electoral reforms package has already jeopardised many of its plans related to next elections among them was start of vital training of hundreds of thousands of government servants ECP would be hiring for election duties.

ECP wanted to start this training that included around 25,000 sessions all together from July 1, as per new laws proposed by electoral reforms committee but yet to be adopted by Parliament.

In his letter to heads of political parties that have representation in parliament as well as parliamentary committee on electoral reforms, CEC urged them to expedite the enactment of the Election Act 2017 at the earliest so that the election commission could be able to make arrangement for the forthcoming general elections accordingly.



The Chief Election Commissioner, in letter has stated that the process of electoral reforms has been in its final stages. Parliamentary Committee on electoral Reforms and its sub-committee are working since August 2014 to bring reforms in election system. The penal at its inception was originally mandated to complete its work within three months.

The recommendations finalised by the panel, but yet to be introduced in legislation, once passed would require election commission to overhaul its mechanism accordingly well before the conduct of forthcoming general elections.

In this connection, ECP had already requested Speaker National Assembly Ayaz Sadiq to ask the said committee to finalise its recommendations and lay the bill before the Parliament for making necessary legislation and enact the Election Act-2017 as early as possible so that the electoral body can start and complete its work in time according to the new act. However, the bill has still not been laid down before the Parliament despite the lapse of more than three months.

CEC, in his letter addressed separately to all heads of these political parties, candidly mentioned list of the vital tasks that are being affected due to delay in passing of legislation.

The tasks include making necessary arrangements for printing of new forms, envelopes and other related materials, procuring election materials, preparing design and printing new training material, training election officials, revising electoral rolls, delimiting or re-describing constituencies, enlisting political parties, making appointments of District Returning Officers, Returning Officers, AROs and appointing other polling staff.

It also mentions developing material for the use of new technologies including RMS for preparation of results and communication.

“CEC has expressed apprehension that, in case of delayed enactment of new Election Act by the Parliament, timely completion of aforementioned activities could become a huge challenge for the commission,” media office of ECP quoted CEC writing to political parties’ heads.