A sluggish reform

If successful the removal of Nawaz as party leader will have a profound change on the national political dynamic

That there needed to be electoral reform has been evident for several years, but finding the motive power to drive that reform has been slow in the making. With the next general election a year away the government on Monday 7^th August tabled an electoral reforms bill which it is expected to firm up the structure of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and add credibility to future elections. The consultations with various stakeholders will result — assuming adoption and implementation — in full autonomy for the ECP and the capacity to formulate its own rules. It is now for the ECP to prepare an action plan to be completed six months prior to the election, a very tight schedule.

The ECP is a body at the heart of political life — and death — in Pakistan. It has ordered the PML-N to replace Nawaz Sharif as the head of the party, arguing that a disqualified member of parliament can no longer serve as the head of a political party. If successful this will have a profound change on the national political dynamic and when added to the detail that the new proposed legislation brings to the electoral process the state will have taken a significant step along the democratic road.

The change process has taken a little over three years to formulate and the sitting of the House that saw the proposal of the bill was thin in attendance (FAFEN data) with the historical significance of the proposed legislation not having caught the imagination of the lawmakers. Virtually all elections since independence have had greater or lesser accusations of cheating, rigging or bad management levelled at them. The ECP itself has often come under fire for not doing its own job. The bill will put the electoral house in order if implemented in letter and in spirit and as such we welcome it, but there are elements of change that are likely to be resisted at local levels, and it is not going to find universal popularity. We wish it safe passage.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 9^th, 2017.

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