ISLAMABAD: The provincial governments in Sindh and Punjab have failed to fix loopholes in the legislation for holding transparent local government (LG) elections. The non-cooperative provinces are yet to supply delimitation record to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
The new legislation does not include provisions on a number of key areas such as finances and campaign regulation, results announcement deadlines, polling and counting procedures, and provisions for transparency of the process. It also does not spell out qualification/appointment criteria of the election tribunals.
The provincial governments were asked by the commission to remove these anomalies, irrelevant sections, terms and contradictory clauses to make the legislation more coherent. The commission also pointed out problematic legislation on the part of Punjab and Sindh regarding delimitation. Recently, a parliamentary panel also asked the ECP to ensure coherent legislation for LG polls.
In many cases, Punjab Local Government Act 2013 authorises chief executive (Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif) to take key decisions in case of disputes. The largest province is also adamant to give right to party affiliations in the elections, an official of the commission said.
The official also stated that as per international observers, the Punjab’s act does not allow political parties to field candidates for LGs which is in conflict with right of association enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan and Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which states that every citizen shall have the right to freedom of association.
An official of the Election Commission told The Express Tribune that Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) have finalised their legislative work and they are adamant to make any more changes but Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led Sindh government has sought one month to do the needful.
The official said that with the appointment of a new chief election commissioner, ECP would take up all lingering issues with the provinces rigorously. To a question, he said experts of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are also involved in the legislative process.
A report on the provincial legislation on local government system prepared by Democracy Reporting International (DRI), a project of UNDP, revealed several gaps and lacunas in the drafts. The key gaps appear in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh Local Government Acts 2013.
The report earlier rectified key issues in the local elections framework of K-P. The assessment suggests that K-P legislators seem to have copied qualifications and disqualifications of candidates/members from the LGO 2001 and retained vague and subjective criteria like having ‘good character’, and being a good Muslim with adequate knowledge of Islam.
The report suggested to the coalition government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) to remove the terms like ‘good character’, ‘adequate knowledge of Islam’, ‘ideology’ and ‘abstaining from (major) sins’. The provincial government did not consider these suggestions but added a sentence that ‘these qualifications shall not apply to a person who is a non-Muslim but such a person shall have a good reputation’.
The provincial government’s act set the condition that the candidate ‘has not been and is not involved, in activities prejudicial to the ideology, interest, security, unity, solidarity, peace and integrity of Pakistan and its people, and the good order and harmony of society’.
The international observers also noted that in K-P no regulation is provided for basic guarantees for transparency, such as requirement for immediate display of results at the polling station and immediate publication of results by the polling station on the ECP website, as well as the right for candidates and observers to receive official result sheets.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 8th, 2014.
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This is really sad to see slavery is still going on in Pakistan I also know another kind of slavery this is when a maid come to clean home she sometime brought her son or daughter along with her and the house lady took full advantage of the presence of this young person and pass all pending work to this young person in return of old food frozen in fridge since long. This poor young person does not have any right to say any thing as he / she have to safe guard his / her mother's job as well. Nusrat