ECP selection

Published July 27, 2016

CONSENSUS on the new Election Commission of Pakistan members from each of the four provinces may have proved elusive, but at least the selection process has been completed without any great controversy and the ECP can resume its work.

While the PTI has claimed that its nominees were ignored and the PTI member in the parliamentary selection committee abstained from voting for the ECP members from Punjab and KP, the rules appear to have been followed scrupulously and an immediate challenge to the composition of the new commission is unlikely.

Perhaps the PTI, which runs the provincial government in KP and aspires to topple the PML-N in Punjab, will rake up the matter nearer to or in the aftermath of the next general election, but that is an issue for the future and by then the ECP members from Punjab and KP will have had adequate opportunity to demonstrate their independence and professionalism.

Welcome as it is that one of the new members is a woman and the monopoly of retired justices has been broken — the ECP member from Sindh is a retired bureaucrat — there are several questions worth considering if the ECP is to be strengthened further, as surely the democratic project needs it to be.

The ECP nomination process was completed virtually on the last day that the rules allowed and only after significant pressure from the Supreme Court, while the electoral body itself was allowed to lapse into dysfunction because parliament did not think to start the process of finding replacements until after the previous four ECP members retired.

Just days before those retirements in mid-June, parliament was hastily convened to pass the 22nd Amendment, which amended the ECP membership criteria and allowed for non-judicial candidates to be considered.

Moreover, the selection process itself was shrouded in unnecessary secrecy, with neither the government nor the opposition revealing the names that had been sent to the parliamentary committee for consideration.

The new ECP members may well be legitimately elected, but the selection process has surely to be infused with yet more transparency, efficiency and wider debate — after all, why did a constitutional amendment yield only one non-judicial ECP member?

There is also the broader issue of electoral reforms. With parliament patting itself on the back for a job well done in selecting new ECP members, now may be the time for it to also take up the much-delayed matter of comprehensive electoral reforms.

Competent and professional leadership of the ECP can only go so far if the rules of the electoral process are not overhauled and the ECP is not given the power and resources it needs to ensure that elections are free and fair.

The country does not deserve another contested election that leads to one of the biggest parties taking to the streets. Now is the time to act.

Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2016

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