PAKISTANI polls are messy affairs, and the 2013 general elections were no exception. The aftermath — with the chaar halkas, paintees punctures and 126-day dharna — created a political crisis and marred, to many minds, the legitimacy of the government which survived by the skin of its teeth.

It then stands to reason that all parties, to one extent or another, would like to avoid a repeat of the post-2013 events by enacting some form of electoral reform in order to plug what holes may exist in the system. That brings us to the Election Bill 2017, the product of the parliamentary committee on electoral reforms which was constituted in July 2014, just before the PTI and PAT’s sit-in.

The bill is a step in the right direction, as it unifies nine separate election laws, and the fact that the committee comprises members of just about every political party represented in parliament is an important step towards achieving political consensus. A clear effort has been made to seek inputs including from citizens and groups such as the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN). The committee will now debate these recommendations, and the bill will be presented in parliament.

The Election Bill 2017 limits access to information.

Steps have been taken to strengthen the ECP, and the government will no longer be able to transfer or suspend election officials, a power that rests solely with the ECP. However, the ECP has no say in preventing the transfers of other government officials, such as local police officials or district commissioners during the poll process, which is alarming given the role such officials have historically played in influencing elections on the local level.

Ironically, while the ECP can suspend such government officials it deems to be violating election laws, there is no prescribed penalty for such officials, meaning that they can ride out their suspension in bliss and then get reinstated as a ‘reward’ for services rendered.

Another step in the wrong direction is that the ECP can no longer disqualify elected members found to have submitted false statements of election expenses or false wealth statements. Instead, such matters are now to be referred to the session court, and experience tells us that — given lengthy court procedures and appeals — the offending member can retain his seat for months if not years while the gears of the legal machinery grind on.

Anyone who recalls the general frustration with the pace of election tribunals in the recent past can easily imagine the consequences of turning the process over to the already burdened ‘mainstream’ judicial system.

But perhaps the biggest problem with this bill is that it limits freedom of information and access in significant ways. Take the process of scrutiny; in a break from the past, this process can now no longer be observed by the media (media personnel are not included in the list of persons authorised to be present during the process) and thus, by extension, the public.

Further, it is not clear whether media will have access to polling stations, be able to observe vote counting or access the returning officer’s office during consolidation of votes — all of which are points in the electoral process where the possibility of rigging is high. Given that the right to this access has not been clearly defined, it is now the discretion of the ECP as to which parts of the process media will have access to.

While this seems more a case of omission than mala fide intent, what is of serious concern is Article 194, which states that ECP officers can face up to five years in prison and a fine of Rs5 million if they leak ‘information or data to any other person’.

Now consider that the penalty for persons actually involved in rigging is far less: up to three years in prison and a Rs100,000 fine, meaning that an official who leaks information about rigging will be penalised to a greater extent than an official actually involved in said rigging. Both this and the previous ambiguity regarding access of media are of serious concern and will, at the very least, raise questions about the transparency of the process.

The long-standing issue of overseas voting has also been improperly addressed; it has been left to the ECP’s discretion as to which foreign states will be eligible, with no clear guidelines or criteria. Where elections will be held, the polling stations will be the Pakistan embassy, consulate or high commission — and you can imagine the kind of chaos that’ll cause in cities with high Pakistani populations.

In balance, the bill is a positive step even if any such document is only as good as the force with which it is implemented. This makes it all the more important to plug the holes now to prevent a repeat flooding of D-chowk.

The writer is a journalist.

Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2017