ISLAMABAD: A Senate committee is expected to take up next week a bill seeking gender-based segregation of polled votes and re-elections in constituencies where women voters’ turnout remains less than 10 per cent.

Titled the Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill 2016, the draft law seeks to amend the Representation of the People Act (Ropa) 1976. It was introduced in the Senate by Sherry Rehman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and will be taken up by a three-member sub-committee on Sept 19, according to the agenda of the meeting issued by the Senate secretariat.

The sub-committee has been constituted by the Senate’s Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, headed by Senator Saeed Ghani, and tasked with submitting a report on the bill and its possible implications.

The sub-committee is headed by former law minister Farooq H. Naek and Saifullah Magsi of the PPP and Saleem Zia of the Pakistan Muslim League-N are its members.

Earlier, the bill was deferred by the committee in May to allow the members to consult their parties. In the same meeting, a senior official of the Election Commission of Pakistan opposed the bill, arguing that a losing candidate my take advantage of the proposed law by preventing women from voting to derail the election.

Amendments proposed by Sherry Rehman seek to ensure women’s participation in polls

A official from the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs suggested that the bill should be referred to the Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms, which has been formulating proposals for amendments to the election laws.

But Senator Sherry Rehman opposed the idea, saying the parliamentary committee was working at a slow pace and insisted that the bill should be passed as swiftly as possible. She said the bill was meant to ensure that women exercised their right to franchise.

The mover has suggested nine amendments to Ropa with an aim to ensure women’s maximum participation in elections and discourage the practice of barring women from voting through annou­nced or unannounced agreements between political parties.

Ms Rehman has proposed an amendment to Section 38 of Ropa which calls for “ensuring that the ballot papers are thereafter disaggregated acco­rding to gender” at the time of vote-count.

A new sub-section 5A suggested in Section 39 states: “All the ballot papers shall also be shown disaggregated by gender in the consolidated statement.”

An important amendment to Section 42 of Ropa says: “In any constituency in which less than 10 per cent registered female voters have voted in the election, the ECP shall declare election ... void in accordance with sub-section (1) and order re-polling within 30 days.”

Similarly, the PPP senator has suggested insertion of a new sub-section 7 in Section 78 of Ropa which defines “corrupt practice” during elections.

The new sub-section reads: “A person is guilty of corrupt practices if he has knowledge of, been privy to, or has personally or through only representative made, an agreement, understanding or promise of any kind, written or unwritten, by which women voters are to be or have been restrained or hindered in casting their votes in any manner whatsoever which may include any type of threat, coercion, force, intimidation or duress.”

The bill provides a right of appeal to a person aggrieved by the ECP decision to order re-polling in a constituency on the basis of the proposed law.

“If the commission declares the election in a constituency void, a person aggrieved by a decision of the ECP within 15 days of the announcement of the decision, may appeal to the Supreme Court for a final decision and the court shall give a final decision within 15 days of the submission of the appeal.”

The bill’s statement of objectives and reasons states: “There have been numerous reports at every election in recent years that women voters have been restrained from voting in the election as a result of an agreement or understanding between different persons which have included politicians, persons representing political parties, the clergy and leaders of the community.

“This process of systemically disqualifying women is a clear violation of their fundamental rights and amounts to an outright discrimination and negation of rights guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution. This bill seeks to address such barriers.”

Moreover, it says: “The bill seeks to make available gender disaggregated data not only an effective, transparent and clear method of documentation, but also as a tool to identify gender breakdown of voting structures and to identify and understand the number of women voting, the issues they face and how to eliminate them.”

Published in Dawn September 12th, 2016