KARACHI: HRCP not satisfied with polling process: NA-250 by-election
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Feb 12: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) on Monday said that voters’ apathy, keenness by overexcited party workers to inflate turnout figures, substandard arrangements at polling stations, and the polling staff’s fear of asserting their authority over violent activists were some of the disturbing features of polling in the NA-250 by-election on Saturday reported by a team of the HRCP observers.
“The main finding by these observers is that unless the Election Commission and various branches of administration involved in the election process improve their performance many times over, it will be impossible for anyone to believe in their capacity to hold the next general election in a free and fair manner,” said an HRCP statement.
The HRCP had undertaken observation of polling in this by-election largely with the object of assessing the level of preparation by the Election Commission and the administrative department to cope with their responsibilities.
Quoting some salient features of the HRCP observers’ report the statement said the polling got delayed by as much as 90 to 150 minutes at several polling stations. The reasons were non-availability of polling material, lack of authentic voters’ list and late arrival of polling staff.
Besides, it said the turnout was pretty low and it was difficult to believe that the final vote count in a by-election came close to the total votes cast in the general election in 2002, and this in spite of the fact that the party that had polled the highest number of votes in 2002 had boycotted the poll this time.
“Security arrangements at polling stations were quite unsatisfactory. All kinds of people including armed activists were allowed freedom at the polling stations. The police told HRCP observers that their principal concern was to avoid tension. At a few places the polling staff sought the HRCP team’s help to get the polling station cleared of undesirable intruders.”
The report said polling staff at almost all booths was afraid of checking young activists. “Nobody is going to risk his life for a few hundred rupees (the fee offered for polling duty)”, the report quoted a presiding officer as saying.
It said at several polling stations presiding officers came under pressure from polling agents and were often unable to resist their demand to allow people to cast votes without prescribed identification papers.
The HRCP report said the pattern of interference with orderly polls that Karachi had known for some years was fully evident.
At one polling booth a group of people that were stamping ballot papers melted away when they saw HRCP observers but left a pad of counterfoils of these papers. It added that those counterfoils had voters’ particulars in such orderly sequence that could not be maintained in any election because people generally did not line up before the polling staff in the sequence in which their names were entered on the voters’ list.
The HRCP observers received several complaints from the election office of the PPP candidate that their polling agents were being harassed and forced out of polling stations, besides manhandling of Mr Nafees Siddiqui and the damage to his car was also reported. In one incident MQM supporters were reported to have alleged that that they had been attacked by an armed supporter of the rival candidate.
The report said the HRCP took notice of the activities and statements by the provincial and federal authorities, including the head of the state himself, which fell in the category of pre-poll interference. Further, the presence of local government officials including elected leaders inside some booths vitiated the poll process.
“If the pattern of events witnessed in this by-election gets repeated in the coming general election, the country’s transition to democratic dispensation cannot be safely assumed,” the report warned. The 23-members of the HRCP team were drawn from academia, legal fraternity and women social workers.
