Gold star

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has earned the award announced for it recently at the International Electoral Awards 2013 held in Kuala Lumpur. The ECP was nominated for the award, for its ‘8300’ SMS service, by the International Centre for Parliamentary Studies, which noted it promoted democracy. The service was used by over 51 million voters to check their names and status on voting lists, making the balloting exercise easier for many. The SMS facility has certainly drawn international attention, with it already getting a mention in the Guinness World Records. This is certainly an achievement the ECP deserves to be applauded for; there can be no doubt its initiative helped make the election process more open for millions of voters in the country.

But as the awards are collected and brought home, we should not forget there is also a need to look into the various reports coming in of irregularities and wrongdoing in the electoral process conducted on May 11^th this year. Various complaints have been made. The task of the ECP is to examine these and take steps to ensure fair play is the order of the day. This, after all, is integral to democracy and everything that it stands for. Even more than any award, an election that no one could doubt would be the biggest prize of all. The attempt must be to ensure we can hold just such an election. The problems that have surfaced this time round, of course, need to be dealt with as per the rules. What is also important, however, is that systems are constructed to prevent them from recurring in the future elections that will be coming up. The scheduled local bodies polls will be a good test of this and an opportunity for the ECP to demonstrate it is capable of conducting a balloting exercise that pushes us forward along the road to an impartial democracy that cannot be questioned by anyone. This should be the target that we aspire towards alongside the smaller measures to make the process as smooth as is possible.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2013.

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