Showdown in the making?: Daunting challenge faced by the ECP

ECP asked questions over its composition and legality of polls held by it since the passage of the 18th Amendment.

ISLAMABAD:

The Supreme Court has its sights set on the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

On one hand, the ECP is in a fix over the court’s clear-cut directives to finalise the new electoral rolls by the fast-approaching deadline of February 23. On the other, it is being asked probing questions over its composition and legality of polls held by it since the passage of the 18th Amendment – questions that could have potentially far-reaching consequences for Parliament.

To top it all off, Thursday saw the Supreme Court slap a stay order on further by-polls till the completion of new error free computerised electoral rolls.

The ECP has a lot of answers to give – some of which it has prepared.

“The ECP is going to take a firm stance that it is not humanly and legally possible to meet this deadline of February 23 if we want to ensure transparency in the new electoral rolls,” sources in the ECP told The Express Tribune.

The commission has decided to call a meeting of all stakeholders, including political parties, on January 23 to take them on board before adopting the ‘firm’ stance in the Supreme Court.

“The CEC (chief election commissioner) and the secretary in their speech on Monday will elaborate legal and technical reasons to explain why it would not be possible for the commission to comply with this order of the court,” officials preparing the draft speech for Election Commissioner Justice (R) Hamid Ali Mirza revealed.

The officials added that Mirza would also remind the court of a similar order passed by the court in 2007 which, in fact, had led to commission officials being accused of the induction of 37 million dubious voters in the electoral rolls on which the February 2008 general elections and subsequent by-polls have been held.

While the commission was preparing electoral rolls in 2007 on the basis of computerised national identity cards (CNICs), the number of voters decreased from 70 million to 52 million. Then PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto approached the apex court to resolve the issue, with the court then directing the commission to include those voters who had been left out within a month.

Due to scarcity of time, the ECP relaxed the condition of having a CNIC and enrolled voters who had any document that could prove they were above 18 years of age. The ECP officials believe that the hurried process led to the enlisting of thousands of fake and dubious voters in the list.

Meeting deadline

According to officials involved in the preparation of new electoral rolls, the lists will not be able to be finalised by the commission before the end of April or by early May this year.

Explaining the process, the officials said that the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) would complete data processing by the end of January after which the draft electoral rolls would have to be exhibited at display centres for three weeks. And since it is a legal requirement for the commission to present the electoral rolls to provide the public an opportunity to rectify any mistakes or errors in the draft list, there was no getting around that.

Before the display, printing copies of the electoral rolls of around 80 million voters would also take more than a week or so, the officials said.  Once the commission has received complaints from the 55,000 display centres setup across the country, it would need another three weeks to address and rectify these errors.

“In many cases we receive hundreds of complaints from many constituencies. Sometimes an entire village is either missing or registered for some other constituency. Verification and subsequent addressing of such complaints will take at least two to three weeks even if we work round the clock,” an official said.

Millions of new voters

Furthermore, since a decision to include the people of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) living in Pakistan in the voters list has been made, the commission estimates it would have induct around 0.4 million such voters.

“There is another chunk of over 3.7 million people who got their CNIC’s after our door-to-door registration campaign ended last year. We would also need to add these and the AJK origin voters in the data during this period,” the official said describing the daunting challenge.

Once this process has been completed, it would take the ECP at least another week to finalise the electoral rolls and get a final copy printed.

Timeframe for by-polls

The stay slapped by the Supreme Court on the conducting of by-polls in seven National Assembly and three provincial assembly seats, for which the ECP has already issued a schedule, also presents a constitutional problem.

According to Article 224 of the Constitution, the commission is bound to hold by-polls within 60 days of a seat being vacated in the Parliament or provincial assembly. In case of the dissolution of assemblies, the given time to hold by-polls cannot exceed more than 90 days.

Furthermore, according to the Electoral Rolls Act, 1974, elections cannot be delayed under the pretext of preparation of new electoral rolls.

“Under the law, the old electoral rolls remain valid till the new electoral rolls are printed. The fathers of the Constitution had passed this law to avert any move to delay polls under any pretext and for the continuation of the democratic process,” a senior official said.

20th Amendment

Then there is the possibility of legislators being disqualified since they were elected under an ECP structure that did not conform to the one drawn out under the 18th Amendment.

The government has tabled the 20th Constitutional Amendment bill in the National Assembly to rectify a “constitutional wrong”, which surfaced as the commission was incomplete and the by-polls were held on the directives of the CEC only.

If the amendment is not passed by early next month, the fate of these members would be left in the balance. There are around 29 such parliamentarians, some of them holding key posts, including Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh and Petroleum Minister Dr Asim Hussain.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 20^th, 2012.