November 11, 2008	Tuesday	Ziqa'ad 12, 1429

KARACHI, Nov 10: A large number of election petitions challenging the election commission’s results are dragged for years due to a lengthy legal process or some other reasons, including “vulnerability to corruption” as many of the petitions are not decided despite the statutory timeframe of four months, till the next elections are held, raising doubts about the transparency of the electoral process, says a report.

The report “Post-election community based mediation and adjudication programme: election monitoring project” is prepared by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and is funded by the United States, though it mentions that the views reported are of the IFES and “not necessarily of the United States government”. This is a preliminary report about the first phase of the project while a final report would be presented after the project concludes sometime in December 2008.

The report says that despite the relatively peaceful Feb 18, 2008, the overall process fell short of a number of international standards for genuine democratic elections and the prospects for the current coalition government to serve the full five-year term remained doubtful, raising the possibility of early elections.

It says that with the local government elections due in mid-2009 and the prospect of early national assembly elections, it was important that unresolved electoral deficiencies were mitigated as quickly as possible to ensure that these were not a potential source of contention in future electoral contests.

The report has given the data from the 1985 elections and says that in 1985 219 elections petitions were filed and it was the only elections in which all the petitions were decided and not a single one was pending when the next elections were held three years later. In the 1988 elections, 103 petitions were filed and two of them were still pending when the next elections were two years away.

In the 1990 elections, 145 petitions were filed, and two of them were pending when the next elections were held three years later. Following the 1993 elections, 106 petitions were filed and 34 were pending when the new elections were held around four years later. In the 1997 elections, 114 petitions were filed and data regarding the number of petitions pending till next elections was not available.

The most startling data is of the 2002 elections, held by Gen Pervez Musharraf, when 220 petitions were filed and 39 were pending till the 2008 elections were held. How the administration could manipulate the elections could be seen that Gen Musharraf with difficulties managed to get Mir Zafarullah Jamali elected as prime minister with the majority of just one vote. At least one MNA who had voted for Mr Jamali was disqualified by the election tribunal for submitting a fake graduation degree, which could have been verified in a few days, but it was decided after the passage of over a couple of years. Had the trial process been quicker, this might not have happened.

Keeping the above data in mind, the report points out that over a 1,000 seats of the national as well as provincial assemblies were contested directly and indirectly in the Feb 18, 2008 polls and 265 election challenges to the results, roughly 25 per cent of all seats, including seats reserved for women and religious minorities, have been filed.

The legal channel that a petition takes, according to the report, is 1) petition is filed with the election commission secretariat’s receipt and issue branch superintendent; 2) it goes to the section officer legal and staff review; 3) then it goes to the deputy secretary elections; 4) then to the joint secretary elections; 5) chief election commissioner; 6) section officer legal and staff; 7) joint secretary elections; 8) deputy secretary elections; section officer legal and staff; 9) provincial election commission; 10) provincial high court and then to the relevant election tribunal where the hearing / trial process, which has its own built-in delaying tactics available for adjournments, starts. When the tribunal decides the case, the order is sent to the election commission of Pakistan and EP record held for archives then there can be an appeal to the Supreme Court. This procedure or steps also differ slightly from province to province.

The IFES projecting that based on the data and observations about previous elections says that despite the generous four-month statutory period available to decide the petitions, the vast majority of 265 elections petitions filed after the Feb 18, 2008 elections could not be completed within the statutory timeframe, and effective remedy was optimistic in this context, especially when election petitions were neither a government nor an adjudicatory priority.

The report says that the lack of robust day-to-day scheduling of the tribunal hearing that was cognisant of the essence of timeliness as critical to the nature of election results challenges was disturbing and contributed to delay and finally the combination and weight of these delays seriously inhibited the credibility of the Election Commission of Pakistan and raised questions about the legitimacy of the election results.

An international, non-partisan democracy development organisation, the IFES since its establishment in 1987 has worked in more than 100 countries. The project in Pakistan is led by Peter D. Lepsch.