The long-awaited electoral reforms are on the cusp of becoming law. The Senate on Friday adopted the Elections Bill, 2017 — which was cleared by the National Assembly last month — with some changes. The bill will now be presented before the lower house for endorsement of the Senate’s amendments. Without doubt, it is one of the most important legislative works executed so far by the current assembly. Into this bill the bicameral legislature has not only compressed and consolidated eight different laws but will also be bringing a myriad of changes to these laws to reform the country’s outdated election system.
The process of reforms was initiated soon after Imran Khan’s PTI and Tahirul Qadri’s PAT landed in Islamabad for a protest sit-in back in August 2014. Since then, a bipartisan parliamentary committee worked hard with all the stakeholders, including the Election Commission of Pakistan, before tabling a draft of a new piece of legislation to parliament.
For its part, the government has succeeded in passing a controversial amendment to the Political Parties Order 2002, which would allow even those not qualified to become a member of parliament to hold office of a political party. By design or default opposition parties seem to have largely overlooked the amendment to section five of the Political Parties Order when the National Assembly voted on the bill earlier. PPP’s Aitzaz Ahsan tried to block it in the Senate — where the combined strength of opposition members is much more than the treasury — but surprisingly faced defeat during a vote count in the upper house of parliament. This will allow ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif to once again head his party even after being disqualified by the Supreme Court as a member of the National Assembly.
Among the changes proposed to the election laws are more financial and administrative autonomy to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), setting up of a modern result management system, enhancing the limit of election campaign expenses, limiting the role of caretaker governments to only day-to-day affairs — until of course a new government is installed.
For the first time, a serious effort has been made to encourage women’s participation in the voting process and ensure their participation in polls on directly contested seats. Now the ECP will keep a gender-wise segregated data of poll results. If it is found that the women vote was 10 per cent of the total votes polled in a constituency or at certain polling stations it would lead to a re-poll. Similarly, political parties have been made bound to allocate at least five per cent tickets to women on general seats in the elections.
The proposed legislative framework has also made room for the use of electronic and biometric verification machines and right of vote to overseas Pakistanis — but only as pilot projects. There are some provisions introduced in the new laws which election experts believe might complicate the system. Some of these provisions are related to the result of the count — the most critical time for every contestant once the polling concludes and tempers are high. Allowing expired CNICs to be used for polling, providing agents of contestants photographed electoral rolls, and allowing returning officers increased polling time only if they get approval three hours before the close of polling might also complicate the system.
It has been proposed that tendered votes (vote of a person representing himself to be a genuine voter when another person has already polled a vote under his name) will be counted during the counting process, albeit separately. Some safeguards and penalties have been proposed against those who would be impersonating others and casting fake ballots. Election experts believe the addition of tendered votes in the vote count could create a mess. Those impersonating are smart enough to use every tactic in the book to get away with fraud. With the next elections barely a year away, it would be hard to test the applicability of most of the new provisions.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 24th, 2017.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ