October 06, 2007	Saturday	Ramazan 23, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Oct 5: A poll monitoring body has put forward a set of key electoral reforms ahead of elections for adoption by the government and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

While issuing the electoral reform proposals, the poll monitoring body stressed that there was a need to adopt, implement and announce reforms at this stage to ensure that a level-playing field was provided to all in a free, fair and transparent contest.

The Citizens’ Group on Electoral Process (CGEP) — a group consisting of eminent Pakistanis from the fields of law, judiciary, media, academics and research — with the help of Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat), in its position paper on proposed electoral reforms, divides reforms into certain sections in order to improve the overall electoral system of the country, a press release issued here on Friday said.

One of the key areas of reforms required before elections proposed by the CGEP is real-time posting of polling station-wise results on the ECP website.

The CGEP believes that the ECP has sufficient time to make arrangements to obtain progressive results which it receives through mobile phones and SMS from areas where traditional facilities like faxes and e-mails are not available.

Delay in posting of the polling station-wise results on the ECP website should be made illegal, demands the CGEP.

Reiterating its earlier position that it put forward in the proposed Code of Conduct for Presidential and General Elections, the citizens’ group has demanded that local governments be made dysfunctional from the date of announcement of election schedule till the finalisation of election results.

In place of dysfunctional nazims and naib nazims, administrators belonging to the civil bureaucracy should be appointed during the period.

The group has urged the commission to exercise control, superintendence and discipline on the staff assigned to it for election duty.

Following the example of the Election Commission of India which has direct control over administration during the election period, the CGEP-proposed reform demands effective control of the ECP on electoral staff including writing of their performance reports by the ECP.

The CGEP further proposes that as a check against bogus voting or impersonation, the ECP should adopt the practice of random checking for thumb prints on the back of the ballot paper and matching the prints with those of Nadra record or on the CNIC to ascertain any mismatch indicating bogus voting.

If it is publicised by the ECP in advance that such a random exercise will be carried out after the election, it will act as an effective deterrent to impersonation and bogus voting, believes the citizens’ group.

The CGEP proposes that ad hoc judges may be appointed to take care of existing work load of regular judges assigned to election tribunals.

It also suggests that the tribunals should be headed by a judge from the province other than the one the case pertains to.

According to the citizens’ group, a period should also be fixed within which the appeals against the decisions of the election tribunals should also be decided.

The CGEP Position Paper on Proposed Electoral Reforms also presents electoral reform proposals in areas such as monitoring and implementing limits on election expenses, advance public announcement of scheme of polling stations and appointment of neutral caretaker government by consensus.

The CGEP reform proposals also demand that like the caretaker prime minister and chief ministers, the ministers in the caretaker cabinet should also not be eligible to contest the immediately following election of any assembly in the general elections.

The section on systemic reforms include key proposals such as appointment of a consensus chief election commissioner (CEC) and a recommendation that the post of the CEC should not necessarily be filled from the judiciary, but by persons of repute from any field.

The CGEP also proposes that the ECP should employ electronic voting machines like the ones tried, tested and now applied on all polling stations in India.

Electronic voting machines, CGEP holds, should be developed and applied in Pakistan to introduce accuracy and efficiency in the counting procedure.