Threat? What threat?

Those that care to make the effort can walk through the back of any political wardrobe and instantly find themselves in a parallel universe, a faux-Narnia where nothing is what it seems, good and bad fade into one another, lions and other beasts roam around, wicked kings and queens joust the day away in a cloud of fantasy and tales of mounting improbability accumulate like flies around a corpse on a hot day. The tale de-jour is related to the alleged threat to security of the electoral rolls which is being touted by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf as the latest the-sky-is-going-to-fall-on-our-heads drama — and it has all the substance of a puff of smoke.

Hearts have been set aflutter in the ECP over the publication of age and religion-wise voter statistics as the PTI announced that it was to file a reference against NADRA chief Usman Yusuf Mobeen; who released generalised statistics of voters last month, just as they had been released to no evidence of impending disaster in 2013. There was no complaint in 2013 and any complaint today is entirely manufactured.

The fact of the matter is that the electoral rolls can exist in the public domain for all and sundry to peruse, analyse and use at their convenience — a right enshrined in Section 79(3) of the Elections Act that allows any candidate or election agent to apply to the district election commissioner for a searchable database in a range of formats of the final electoral roll along with voters’ photographs and other information. Such information is already in the public domain courtesy of the 2013 election, when it was provided to the media by none other than the ECP itself with no obvious catastrophic consequence. An updated version of the same presents no threat to the state either. NADRA is anyway required by freedom of information legislation to provide this data if asked. Much ado about nothing.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 20^th, 2018.

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