Amid low turnout: Presiding officers sail smoothly

No law and order problems, but several election code violations reported.

ISLAMABAD:

Presiding officers supervising the NA-48 by-elections seemed to have an easy day at the job on Thursday as voter response in the capital remained slow and peaceful throughout.

The officers, who were granted powers of first class magistrates, said they did not feel the need to use their express authority as there were no worrying incidents involving polling agents or political workers.

“The proceedings are going smoothly and we did not face any difficulty in setting up polling arrangements,” said Ghazala Naveed, a presiding officer at the Islamabad Model School G-9/2 polling station, who added that only 104 of around 1,100 voters registered at the station had come to the ballot box by noon the station.

On the men’s side of the same polling station, Presiding Officer Ghulam Ali said they did not face any difficulties in getting polling material from the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) because the scale and extent of the by-polls is much smaller than the general elections. He said he was aware of the presiding officer’s powers but had not felt the need to exercise them.

The officers also seemed lax in preventing voters from carrying their cell phones to the polling booths.

At an F-10 polling station, when Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf candidate Asad Umar walked in to visit along with an entourage of a dozen people, the presiding officer did not caution Umar, even though the officer said only the candidate, not his entire posse, were allowed to enter polling stations.

Some presiding officers said they would not use their police-like authority to jail miscreant voters or discipline candidates anyway because of potential consequences.

“If I take the extreme route in dealing with rowdy political workers, they might come after me afterwards,” one presiding officer told The Express Tribune.

There were no reports of rigging incidents or fighting between rival political groups in NA-48 and some polling staff members credited the military for ensuring discipline.

“The presence of military personnel also prevents any untoward incidents from happening,” said Haider Ali, the presiding officer at the Islamabad Model College for Girls F-10/2 polling station. “The army men have been proactive and they have cooperated very nicely with the polling staff.”

Security Situation

Military presence was visible inside most polling stations around the federal capital, which was on high security alert on the day of by-polls. Pakistan Army gunmen, in addition to Islamabad police constables, manned the gates of the polling stations and patrolled inside the stations.

Security frisking at the gates was almost nonexistent, however. Police were seen letting voters inside without any semblance of checking.

Sixteen Quick Response Force teams also patrolled the constituency during polling hours. There were reports of aerial firing in Sector G-9 and information relayed on the police wireless indicated that security personnel were not deployed at a G-9/1 polling station when voting started in the morning. But the by-polls passed without any major incidents of violence, according to police and Rescue 1122 officials.

ECP Code Violations

Just like the general elections on May 11, several violations of ECP’s Election Day Code of Conduct were witnessed in NA-48. Political parties violated ECP’s regulation that political party camps could not be set up within 400 yards of the polling stations.

Constables deputed outside an I-8/3 blamed the camps on the administration.

“The administration should not have allowed the party workers to set up the camps last night,” one constable said. “Now that they have been pitched, we do not want to create a fuss by uprooting them.”

In Sector F-7, supporters of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz were also seen transporting voters from their houses to a polling station in a van. The ECP has disallowed transportation of voters by candidates as candidates with more resources can get an unfair advantage.

An Islamabad Police officer stationed outside a polling station said he was not aware of the ECP code and later said other political parties were also transporting voters.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 23^rd, 2013.