June 26, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 10, 1428

ISLAMABAD, June 25; A group of concerned citizens comprising former judges, military and civil bureaucrats and mediapersons on Monday asked the Chief Election Commissioner to hold an all parties consultation on the issue of electoral rolls and take a pro-active approach to addressing the citizens concerns over the disenfranchising of over 20 million voters through the preliminary electoral rolls.

According to a recent data released by the Election Commission, 521,024,28 voters have been registered in the preliminary electoral rolls, 20 million short of the number of eligible voters in 2002. That means that nearly 30 per cent of voters would be disenfranchised.

In a letter written to the Chief Election Commissioner Justice (retired) Qazi Muhammad Farooq, the Citizens Group on Electoral Process (CGEP) said that it was greatly concerned that the “ECP does not seem sufficiently concerned” about such a massive disenfranchisement. While several political parties and citizen groups have expressed concern on the matter, “the ECP has shown little interest in initiating a proper process of consultation with them,” the letter stated.

“The gravity of situation, which has the potential to jeopardise the upcoming general election, demands that the CEC should personally intervene to address the situation. Unfortunately we do not see any evidence of a serious response from the Election Commission,” the CGEP held in the letter.

The CGEP suggested that the ECP should immediately begin a process of consultation on preliminary electoral rolls with all the stakeholders especially the political parties to ensure error-free and inclusive electoral rolls are available in time.

It said the ECP should seriously re-consider its decision to reject the possibility of using Nadra’s database as one of the basis of electoral rolls.

The ECP has also been asked to provide preliminary electoral rolls on its website and provide complete copies of the preliminary rolls on CDs to any citizen or party that wishes to obtain it, in the interest of transparency.

It has also been suggested that the last date for filing complaints or applications for addition and modification in eligible voters’ names in the preliminary electoral rolls should be extended beyond July 3. In addition, the ECP should take urgent steps to simplify the cumbersome and complicated process of registration of new voters or the correction/objection process to those already registered.

Despite spending a huge amount of Rs1 billion on preparation of electoral rolls, the project has seen inordinate delay. The quality of work has further damaged the public confidence in the electoral process in general and in the electoral rolls in particular.

The letter said the CGEP members have personally experienced that the system of entertaining public complaints, etc., at the ECP display centres is deeply flawed, disorganised and almost non-functional. The designated staff is generally absent but not found after 12 mid-day in particular although they are supposed to be present at display centres up to 5pm.

When ECP announced that the display centres would remain open, there is hardly any of them open and manned on Sundays. The staff at the display centres is poorly trained/briefed and is generally demoralised. In any case, a citizen who makes the effort of visiting a display centre can neither register his/her name nor make any corrections at the display centres which defeats the whole process of creating access to citizens.

With this state of affairs, it will be very difficult to update the preliminary electoral rolls in any meaningful way. It is imperative that the ECP improves the working at the display centres and widely publicises their locations.

Offering its complete support and good wishes to the ECP for holding an efficiently managed free, fair and credible election, the CGEP stated that support from the citizens is the ECP’s key source of power to withstand unfair pressures from the ruling party as well as the opposition or any other quarters and the CEC should value it in the interest of the constitutional responsibilities of his office.

The CGEP, in a letter addressed to the CEC in February had raised its concerns over the process of preparing electoral rolls. The letter was not officially acknowledged or responded to by the CEC. The Citizens Group has been working since December 2006 under the auspices of PILDAT.

The members of CGEP members include former SC judge Mr Justice (retired) Wajihuddin Ahmed, former Balochistan High Court Chief Justice and governor Mr Justice Amirul Mulk Mengal, Ghazi Salahuddin, Arif Nizami, Mujibur Rehman Shami, former chief of ISI Lt-Gen (retd) Asad Durrani, political and defence analyst Hasan-Askari Rizvi, former interior minister and Sindh governor Lt-Gen (Retd) Moinuddin Haider, Supreme Court Bar Association president Muneer A Malik, former LHC judge Justice (retd) Nasira Javed Iqbal.