Govt to form parliamentary committee for electoral reforms

ISLAMABAD: The government has decided to constitute a high-level parliamentary committee to prepare a comprehensive electoral reforms package to ensure rigging-free elections in the country.

An official source told The News here on Thursday that the parliamentary committee would include representatives of all the political parties in proportion to their representation in parliament. It would be an influential committee like the one assigned the task of recommending the 18th Amendment by the previous parliament.

Although, most of the political parties had complaints about rigging in the last year elections, it was the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf that has agitated the issue most and recently even started street protests and public rallies to get the electoral process reformed.

PTI Chairman Imran Khan not only seeks the reformation of the electoral process but has also demanded of the removal of all members of the present Election Commission of Pakistan. The PTI wants the constitution of a new commission.

Different political parties, including the PPP, have endorsed the PTI’s demand but they want to address the issue within parliament instead of taking it to the streets. The PTI strategy, however, seems to have worked as the government is now going to set up the parliamentary committee for electoral reforms.

It is expected that like Senator Raza Rabbani-led parliamentary committee for the 18th Amendment, the electoral reforms committee would also prepare a comprehensive electoral reforms package with consensus.

Although, generally the blame is placed on the ECP for electoral rigging in the last elections, the outgoing parliament has had its major share in this situation as it had blocked critically- important ECP legislation, which had sought empowerment of the Election Commission of Pakistan on the lines of the Indian model.

The legislative bill was referred to parliament in February 2013 for enactment but it did not give it a serious thought.During the last one year, none of the political parties in the present parliament has bothered to take it up for consideration either in the National Assembly or in the Senate.

The bill, which was approved by the ECP under the then Chief Election Commissioner Fakhruddin G Ebrahim, had mainly sought the empowerment of the ECP to transfer or suspend any officer, including the chief secretary or the inspector general of police, in case such an officer was found involved in meddling in election affairs or creating hurdles in holding of elections in a free, fair and independent manner.

The bill had also proposed 30-day scrutiny period but even this was not allowed by the previous parliament. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had approved a 30-day scrutiny period for nomination papers of candidates to ensure that frauds, fake degree holders, tax and utility bill defaulters and other cheats are barred from contesting the next polls by cross checking their credentials from the concerned authorities.

To ensure true representation of the people, the legislative bill had also recommended that the winners in elections must bag 50 percent of the total votes cast. The fines for violation of the code of conduct were also proposed to be increased manifold. For instance, Rs100,000 fine was recommended to be imposed on a voter casting a bogus vote. Those committing election forgery were also recommended to pay a fine of Rs100,000 and face up to five-year imprisonment.The present system is also short of any mechanism for the implementation of articles 62 and 63 to ensure that only the persons of character could get into parliament.