Damning ECP report

That there is an urgent need for a complete overhaul of the electoral process in Pakistan there is not a shred of a doubt. The release of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) draft report on the conduct of the 2013 elections underscores this, and gives some pointers for the future. (Confusingly, the ECP later promptly denied ownership of the report, ignoring the fact that it was posted at its own website.) Few are going to read its 175 pages; and the social media was quickly awash with conspiracy theorists who found themselves, in their eyes, proven right — to say nothing of the revolutionaries in Islamabad who fell on the ECP confusion like vultures on a carcass. Nonsense. The 2013 election was the most scrutinised out of the 11 general elections that Pakistan has held, and international observers were unanimous in saying that they were ‘fairer than any previous elections’ — which is not to say that they were entirely free and fair because they were not, but in relative terms compared to previous ones they were.



The report points to failures in the provision of security and an electoral management system that ‘struggled to exert effective control at the lowest level’ — that is the level of the polling station and the management thereof. Returning Officers (ROs) tasked with scrutinising the applications of candidates pre-poll delivered inconsistent results, the scrutiny window was too narrow and the centralised scrutiny cell set up in the ECP Secretariat failed dismally. The Result Management System (RMS) failed to work as well, in part because those operating it were not properly trained for the job. Coordination between the ECP and its partners was abysmally weak at every level. Line departments, the police and the civil administration were all open to political influence. There are no surprises in the ECP report, which is a portrait of bungling incompetence everywhere. That said it does not form the basis of an invalidation of the election per se, but it does make crystal clear what needs fixing before Pakistan treads the electoral road again. It is equally clear that the ECP needs to manage its information flow a little more efficiently, as it managed to make itself look more than a little foolish on this occasion.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th, 2014.

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