ECP urged to enhance transparency, accountability

The Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) called on the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Friday to enhance its institutional transparency and accountability and share progress on the strategic plans more frequently.

In its latest report on the implementation of the ECP's 3rd Strategic Plan (2019-23), PILDAT highlighted its concerns about the ECP's monitoring mechanisms, late release of annual reports, and delayed rollout of the 4th Strategic Plan (2024-28).

According to a PILDAT press release, the 3rd Strategic Plan contained 11 strategic pillars, which were further divided into 30 goals and 92 strategic actions. These translated to a total of 111 measurable indicators, majority of which laid out a specific task and a deadline for completion.

The press release stated that the focus of the strategic plan was both internal – emphasising the ECP's own organisational infrastructure – and external – emphasising electoral management and relationships with stakeholders.

"Externally, the focus was on legal reforms (Pillar 1), transparency and public perception (Pillar 2), election operations (Pillar 5), voter registration (Pillar 7), electoral technologies (Pillar 8) and election dispute resolution (Pillar 9)," it said.

"Internally, the strategic pillars focused on institutional development (Pillar 3), training and capacity building (Pillar 4) and financial management (Pillar 6)," it added. "Gender sensitivity (Pillar 10) as well as monitoring and research capabilities (Pillar 11) were to be improved internally and externally."

While the ECP's consistent engagement in strategic planning over the past 15 years should be appreciated, PILDAT said, a significant gap needed to be filled when it came to monitoring and reporting progress on the implementation.

The think tank stated that the data shared with PILDAT in September 2023 were not the ECP's detailed progress reports rather presentations that listed progress on the strategic pillars as percentages and outlined the achievements of each wing of the ECP.

PILDAT said that the ECP did not explain how the reported percentages were calculated, adding that the polls supervisor just reported an overall 88% progress on the Strategic Plan, while the progress on individual pillars ranged from 69 to 95%.

"The ECP made significant commitments in the Strategic Plan and it is critical that the progress is diligently monitored and shared with the public. For example, under Pillar 7 (Voter Registration and Participation), the ECP committed to reduce the gender gap in electoral rolls to 6% by 2023," it said.

"However, the gap was 7.7% in December 2023. The ECP did not share any progress on the specific sections pertaining to the electoral gender gap with us," PILDAt added, stressing the need for having comprehensive progress reports, as specified in the 3rd Strategic Plan.

"These reports should be released … annually or even more frequently to ensure transparency. While the inclusion of measurable indicators in the 3rd Strategic Plan was a major improvement, future plans should include means of verification (MoVs) so that implementation can be monitored with accuracy."

PILDAT stressed that the release of the 4th Strategic Plan should not be delayed, as continuation in planning was vital for institutional development. It recommends that improving the credibility of the ECP should be a vital part of the next strategic plan.

"Additionally, it is deeply concerning that the ECP's Annual Reports of 2022 and 2023, which are key documents for institutional transparency, were not released within the legally mandated timelines under the Elections Act, 2017 (Section 16)," PILDAT noted.