Despite Pemra orders, Geo not yet fully restored

 

ISLAMABAD: Despite the clear orders of the Supreme Court (SC) and the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra), Geo News is still not accessible to a large number of viewers across the country, putting a big question mark on the writ of the government and rule of law in the country.
Reports from across the country suggest that hidden forces are preventing the restoration of Pakistan’s most popular channel even after the written directives of Pemra issued after the expiry of the 15-day ban on June 20, 2014.

In another blatant violation of the Supreme Court order, the channel numbers of Geo News and other members of Geo family including Geo Tez, Geo Super and Geo Kahani have been changed illegally.

The apex court, while disposing of Geo News petition on May 26, directed Pemra to restore Geo News on its original position but the channel is either completely blocked or placed on last numbers where signal quality is too poor to show the clear transmission.

On the other hand, while Pemra has imposed one-month suspension on Geo Entertainment for showing blasphemous content, it has taken no action against other channels which aired the same content in their morning shows. A private channel has even reproduced the same content repeatedly but Pemra has turned a blind eye towards the issue. It seems that Pemra has become a helpless regulator as it has failed to ensure implementation of its orders in letter and spirit.

On June 20, Pemra suspended the licence of a private TV channel for 15 days for airing anti-judiciary programmes but the authority could not fully implement the orders and the transmission continued in violation of law. Four days later, Sindh High Court (SHC) restored the transmission of the private channel and it was back on air immediately.

But the same could not happen in case of Geo News. The authority had suspended the licence of Geo News for fifteen days on June 5. The channel respected the law and suspended transmissions in Pakistan on the same day.

Upon completion of the suspension period on June 20, Pemra forwarded the notification of restoration of Geo News to all its regional offices with direction that the country’s cable operators should obey the order of the Supreme Court according to which the position of Geo News on cable TV network should be the same as was in the second week of April, 2014.

However the directions of authority were not taken seriously by the cable operators in several parts of the country.The management of Geo News has already suffered huge financial losses worth billions for illegal blockade and repositioning of Geo and other channels of the family including Geo Tez, Geo Kahani and Geo Super.

Pak Army fully prepared to defeat any aggression: COAS

RAWALPINDI: Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif has said that the Pakistan Army, in unison with other services, is fully prepared to deter and defeat any aggression across the entire spectrum of threat, says a press release.

The COAS, Gen Sharif, visited the Command and Staff College, Quetta, on Friday.While addressing the participants of the course, the COAS said that Pakistan Army had the unique accomplishment of having been employed on various fronts against two different types of threats i.e. conventional and sub conventional for the last over one decade and was respected for its achievements and sacrifices the world over.

The COAS exhorted the need for future leadership to remain abreast with the latest global and regional developments and focus on their professional grooming.While elaborating on his vision, the COAS emphasised that the army should carry its glorious legacy as a national army suffused with an enhanced degree of professional ethos, pride and esprit de corps.

It is an army which continues to be reflective of Pakistan’s aspirations manifesting the collective will and resilience of its proud citizens, a symbol of national unity and cohesion.Earlier, on arrival in Quetta, the COAS was received by Commander Southern Command, Lieutenant General Naseer Khan Janjua.

Women voters not fully registered, says study

ISLAMABAD: The issue of under-registration of women voters continuously shadowed the constitutionally promised universality and equal representation of the electorate in the 2013 general elections, albeit with varying intensity across regions.

“Of the 86.2m voters, 43.6 % were females compared to the 80m voters in 2008 with 44 % women voters,” said an analysis of the Free & Fair Election Network (Fafen).It has prepared a voluminous report, containing Parallel Vote Tabulations (PVT), compared to turnout and party trends of all the National Assembly constituencies.

The report said that at the provincial level, the ratio of man-woman voters has skewed further towards the male side in Punjab and Balochistan—percentages of female voters changed from 45.9 % to 2008 to 42.6 % in 2013 in Balochistan and dropped from 45 % in 2008 to 43.8 % in 2013 in Punjab.

The percentages of female voters have increased from 2008 to 2013 in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) from 30.1 % to 34.2 %, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) from 40.7 % to 42.8%, Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) from 45.8 % to 46.3 % and more marginally in Sindh from 44.2 % to 44.8 %.

The report said a key issue observed in the last parliamentary polls was the disproportionate and significant increase in the number of rejected votes—the number, while increasing from 775,720 in 2002 to 973,694 in 2008, recorded a substantial raise of 64 % to reach 1,502,717 in the 266 constituencies observed.

It said that the issue of rejected voters is critical not merely due to the numbers but also given the skewed distribution across constituencies and regions—the numbers range from zero in NA-53 to 25,908 in NA-266.

The report said the distribution of rejected votes paints a somber picture in that only 27 of the 266 constituencies have fewer than 2,000 rejected votes. Of the rest, 78 constituencies have rejected votes from 2,000-5,000, 148 ranged in 5,001-10,000, and 10 fell in the 10,001 to 15,000 category while three constituencies had rejected votes exceeding 15,000.

From the results’ perspective, the issue is highlighted further by the fact that the number of rejected votes exceeds the margin of victory in 35 of the 266 constituencies covered in this report. Of these, the rejected votes outnumber the margin of win by less than 1,000 votes in six, indicating an acquired importance of rejected votes due to close competition.

In the other 29 constituencies, the number of rejected votes outweighs the margin of victory by as little as 1,140 (NA-153) and as many as 19,701 (NA-266).

The report said that the PVT compares the observed vote count in a sample of polling stations with the compiled election result for that constituency in order to provide evidence that confirms or disputes the official poll result.

It said the PVT methodology was developed over 20 years ago and has been applied in many countries around the world by international and domestic election monitoring organizations as a proven analytical method for verifying the accuracy of government vote counts. The PVT is based on direct observation of vote counting in a scientifically verifiable, robust sample of the polling stations in each constituency.

The report noted that although the PVT cannot measure other election-related problems like vote buying, voter intimidation, ballot box stuffing or the use of ghost polling stations, the PVTs are designed to identify potential inaccuracies in the official count by comparing it with actual observed and verified vote counts at sampled polling stations.

The PVT can help detect centralized changes in vote counts if the percentage of vote in official count offers in a statistically significant way from the percentages calculated from the PVT sample.

In cases in which electoral commissions release polling station level results, the PVT counts for sampled polling station and the commission’s polling station data can be compared directly.