ISLAMABAD, Oct 9: A civil society organisation on Monday urged the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to implement administrative and procedural reforms to ensure free and fair elections in the country.

In a statement, the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives said the ECP needed to implement significant administrative and procedural reforms in the light of experiences and lessons learned from the past elections. “However, it seems that the ECP remains oblivious of such a need despite frequent reminders from the civil society organisations and political parties,” it added.

One of the most important reforms that the ECP needs to undertake is regarding its monitoring and oversight mechanism for the code of conduct. “Past experience tells us that the code of conduct is frequently violated by all political contestants with impunity, while the ECP miserably fails to take any effective action against the violators.” The commission needs to give a serious consideration to this problem, and must inform the stakeholders about how it would be handling complaints and ensuring compliance with the code of conduct during the next general elections. The monitoring and implementation mechanism established for the next elections should be transparent, efficient, credible and effective; and violators must be severely punished without any exception.

Serious problems have also been noticed in the past in relation to the electoral rolls. The new computerised electoral rolls are not likely to address these problems, as the new rolls would include many unverified voters from the 2002 rolls which were widely known for including bogus and double entries.

It said the new electoral rolls must be made available on the website, so that individual voters as well as political parties and civil society organisations could have access to them. This would improve transparency of electoral rolls and help in identifying the potential problems by the public.

Furthermore, many politicians and civil society observers have frequently complained about the late notification of or last minute changes to the polling schemes. “It is suspected that such delays or last-minute changes are often deliberate, and are meant to benefit favourite candidates.”

One main complaint about the 2002 general elections was the inconsistencies between the results announced at the polling stations and the ones reported to or declared by assistant returning officers.