The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s agitation against alleged rigging in the 2013 general elections has brought the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) into focus since election day on May 11 last year.
Since then up till now, a number of allegations have been levelled and several flaws have been unearthed in the electoral system. A recent report disclosed that more than 1.5 million votes were rejected in the 2013 general elections, and the PTI accuses that the rejection of votes in such a big number was a key tool in large-scale rigging.
This reporter spoke to additional ECP Director General Masud Ahmed Malik on the issue. Here are excerpts from the conversation.
Q. Why were such a large number of votes rejected in the 2013 elections?
A. Votes are rejected in all elections. This is not the first time that votes have been rejected in such a big number. It has become so noisy this time because of a fully-fledged campaign against the elections. Basically, most of the voters don’t vote accurately but nobody paid attention to rejected votes in previous elections.
Q. What are the reasons for rejection of votes in such a large number?
A. There are several reasons to reject a vote. Many people don’t fold the ballot paper correctly, others don’t stamp in an accurate manner and many others use so much ink on the stamp that it makes the whole ballot paper stamped.
Q. Was there any awareness campaign or training to make voters aware of such technicalities?
A. We did run awareness campaigns on electronic and print media. We also trained our staff and told them to direct each voter how to vote. Still, people made mistakes and voted wrongly. Actually a majority of our voters are from rural
areas, they are illiterate. They did not even have identity cards, so they do mistakes while casting votes. This is a technical issue.
Q. So political parties’ accusations against the election commission are right?
A. No, they are wrong. Because the votes were rejected in all constituencies and not in selected ones. Propaganda and protest over it is not fair. Votes have always been rejected, it is not true that the rejection of votes has played any part in rigging. If anybody had to reject votes to commit rigging, then the rejection should take place in selected constituencies and not everywhere.
Q. Can the election commission prove these allegations wrong?
A. We can’t respond if somebody stands up somewhere and starts raising objections and hurling allegations. We can’t respond to everybody, until and unless he or she raises an objection in a legal way from a proper forum. Those who are hurling allegations today never challenged these votes in any appropriate forum. They had their polling agents in all the polling booths, they could have challenged the rejected votes in front of presiding officers, then in front of returning officers, then in the election tribunals, then in the high courts and finally in the Supreme Court, but they didn’t. We will respond to them and to their allegations at a proper forum, should they come.
Q. Are you planning any measures to avoid rejection of votes in big numbers in future?
A. Yes, we will create more awareness among the masses through better use of print and electronic media. We will also improve training for our staff to enable them to educate voters to cast vote accurately.
Q. Aren’t you planning to introduce an electronic voting system?
A. Yes, we are considering the electronic voting system, but we can’t enforce it until and unless we find it is better and flawless. There is involvement of billions of rupees in the project and we can’t just throw away such a huge amount of public money on it without ensuring the system is authentic and reliable and we can’t decide about it unless we examine it completely.
Q. So is the electronic voting system also flawed?
A. Yes, it can be hacked. There are other issues with the system. Actually, all the developed countries using this system are now returning to the manual and stamped voting system.
Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2014