July 21, 2002	Sunday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 10,1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

ISLAMABAD, July 20: The Pakistan People’s Party has proposed a reform package for ensuring free and fair general election in October.

The package suggests expansion of the election commission (EC), introduction of closed party lists system and giving fair media coverage to all the candidates.

It further proposes that members of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission be included in equal numbers in the teams working under the chief election commissioner.

The PPP has suggested that the election commission should have powers to hear complaints and remove any official found interfering in the judicial process.

The package says the EC should have the right to inspect with a complainant the President House and any other military or civil building, where computers are alleged to be kept for virtual cast of vote to tamper with electoral results in the name of “control and command centres”. Each “control and command centre” should have representatives of the candidates, bar associations’ members and the press.

In order to ensure a fair administration, it proposes, a political government of national consensus be inducted and alternatively, power be transferred to the judiciary for holding the elections, as was done in Bangladesh. At the minimum, it says, politically motivated authorities should be replaced with neutral ones.

The reform package proposes the British method of vote count, which was practised until 1988. It says votes should be counted, certified and sealed by presiding officers.

According to the suggestions, the presiding officers should immediately take the votes to be cast in the October polls to the district returning officers, who should open the ballots in front of the candidates/representatives, and should count and announce the result.

The package also suggests that the practice of taking the votes to the provincial election commission to feed into computers and send to the national election commission be stopped to avoid computer rigging, where virtual votes are cast at virtual polling stations by the rigging cell of the establishment, while the election commission officials are computerizing the real results.