ISLAMABAD, June 20: Major political parties, including the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML), on Wednesday called for establishing a parliamentary committee to oversee the electoral process and improve the performance of the Election Commission (ECP).

Speaking at a roundtable that took notice of missing of over 30 million voters from the electoral rolls, three opposition parties — People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Awami National Party (ANP) — announced to file petitions in the Supreme Court against the ECP for irregularities in the draft voter list.

The representatives of seven political parties, mainly from opposition, spoke at the roundtable conference jointly arranged by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Centre for Civic Education (CCE).

Farhatullah Babar of the PPP, who had initiated the idea of the parliamentary monitoring of the ECP working, asked all the political parties to consider drastic steps, including boycott of the elections.

The speakers also demanded audit of the funds provided by donors to the ECP for computerisation of electoral rolls.

The roundtable saw some rowdy scenes when Azeem Chaudhry of the ruling PML raised objections on some opposition leaders for using “harsh” and, what he called, “abusive language” against President Gen Pervez Musharraf.

The opposition leaders were of the view that as Gen Musharraf was responsible for all the ills and, therefore, they would continue to take his name. At one point, when Mr Chaudhry stopped ANP’s Hashim Babar from criticising Gen Musharraf, the representatives of Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI) Col (retd) Yunus Ali, Amir Mehmood Kiani, Sardar Azhar and Saifullah Niazi staged a walkout and boycotted the event.

Before leaving the venue, Col Yunus said the ECP had done all this wilfully and what it had done was ‘nonsense’.

In the end of the conference, NDI’s country director Sheila Fruman read out the recommendations. She said no evidence had been provided by the ECP that multiple entries had been deleted from the list and the ECP had refused to allow monitors to observe the voters’ list data entry centre, the training of election officials or any other aspect of the electoral process.

She said the ECP had refused to provide the voters list to political parties or civil society organisations and location of display centres had not been properly promoted.

She said the ECP was needlessly creating a climate of suspicion about the elections by not operating in an open and transparent manner.

The speakers called for an amendment to the Electoral Rolls Act, 1974, to remove difficulties in provision of (preliminary and final) computerised electoral lists in electronic format to political parties and civil society. Such an amendment should incorporate all possibilities associated with available information and communication technologies i.e. availability of voters list on net/web and e-registration, they demanded.

The parties also demanded extension in the display period with enhanced public awareness/voter education campaign to tell people that all previous voter lists had been cancelled and every eligible voter had to get him or her registered afresh. The speakers stressed that the ECP should immediately start to hold regular forums with political parties on all aspects of the electoral process.

Senator Latif Khosa of the PPP criticised the requirement of computerised national identity card for enrolment as a voter. “The Constitution, the Electoral Rolls Act 1974, Representation of Peoples’ Act, and National Registration Act 1973 do not talk about such a requirement,” he maintained.

Ahsan Iqbal of the PML-N demanded audit of the donors fund given to the ECP. He said the irregularities had been wilfully done and the government wanted to create doubts about the electoral process and was planning to rig the elections.

Azeem Chaudhry admitted that there were many problems in the voters list and asked the political parties to accept the prime minister’s offer to develop a consensus mechanism for free and fair elections.

Senator Abdul Malik of the National Party and Akram Shah, general-secretary of Pukhtoonkhawa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) said display centres in several areas of Balochistan were non- existent.

Senator Malik said it was not the ECP but the establishment that was responsible for manipulation of voters’ registration process.

ANP’s Hashim Babar demanded reconstitution of independent election commission.

Senator Safdar Abbasi, Farzana Raja, Amir Fida Paracha and Palwasha Behram of the PPP, Dr Tariq Chaudhry of the PML-N, Yakoot Jamilur Rahman of the PML and Zafarullah Khan, executive director of the CCE, also spoke on the occasion.