Empowering overseas Pakistanis: Senate committee asks govt to scrap proposal

Electoral reforms body united over expats’ right to vote

ISLAMABAD:

The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has landed in hot water while dealing with a tricky subject: voting rights for overseas Pakistanis.

Headed by a PML-N lawmaker and represented by all the parliamentary parties, a panel working on electoral reforms has unanimously asked the government to make arrangements for including overseas Pakistanis in the electoral process.

The proposal first came under discussion after the judgment of the Supreme Court, led by the then chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, had asked the government to extend the right to overseas Pakistanis.

However, Information & Broadcasting and Law Minister Senator Pervaiz Rashid had recently opposed the proposal in his personal capacity, terming the demand “unfeasible”.

During the meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Law, Justice & Human Rights, panel chairman Senator Javed Murtaza Abbasi had also agreed with the minister’s viewpoint and directed the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs to write to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif once more about scrapping the proposal.

The ministry had told the panel that the PM’s office had not responded to their previous letter on the subject and they were still waiting for guidelines on the matter.

The senate body, whose meeting no opposition member bothered to attend, had persuaded the secretary of the parliamentary affairs ministry to write to the premier again with the recommendations of the panel.

It was also one of the major demands of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf to ensure that overseas Pakistanis had the right to vote, particularly in the upcoming local government elections in the Islamabad Capital Territory, followed by the polls in Sindh and Punjab.

Senator Rashid said there were certain hurdles: “Many countries’ laws restrict such democratic activities on their land. A fair number of Pakistanis live in [monarchical] Middle Eastern countries.”

He also said it would be impossible for a candidate to campaign within the defined resources.

“Only one trip to the US requires a minimum of a million rupees.” The secrecy of the ballots and arrangements of ballot boxes were also cited as difficult areas.

ECP’s stance

The stance of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is not much different from that of Rashid’s. The body had also briefed the electoral reforms committee in May on the difficulty of providing the basic right to vote to remittance-sending Pakistani citizens.

ECP officials said that in many Middle Eastern countries, where a large number of Pakistanis reside, voting is not allowed under the domestic laws.

However, the reforms body led by MNA Zahid Hamid observed that all the parties wanted to introduce legal provisions to allow overseas Pakistanis the right to vote once legal and technical issues are addressed.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th,  2015.