Need for review

Legislation done in indecent haste

Prime Minister Imran Khan is in haste to get the electronic voting system in place and enfranchise the expatriates through e-voting. He continues to insist that electronic voting machines (EVMs) alone can bring transparency and put an end to every election becoming disputed. The PML(N) has questioned why the government has suddenly started pressing for electoral reforms after repeatedly facing defeats in by-polls. The PPP has called the electronic voting system institutionalized rigging as the EVMs can easily get hacked and the vote count can be tampered with.

Meanwhile Spanish firm Minsait hired by the government for third-party audit has reported that the existing e-voting solution for overseas Pakistanis “does not fulfill the constitutional requirements of vote secrecy, and neither the voters nor the ECP would have any guarantee that the results obtained from the system represent the choices made by the voter.”

The way the government bulldozed 21 bills without proper debate has given birth to suspicions. The Elections (Amendment) Bill, 2020, comprising 49 amendments to Elections Act 2017 was adopted by the  Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs on June 8, when only eight out of the total 21 members were present. Why didn’t the government ensure the presence of most of the committee members when a Bill entirely changing the country’s decades-old electoral system was being passed? The Bill was then urgently put before the National Assembly on June 10 and passed as a part of 20 other Bills the same day without any debate. As the government already knew the opposition’s reservations about EVMs, it was all the more necessary to create a consensus if it was genuinely interested in an electoral system acceptable to all.

The ECP holds that several reforms proposed by the government are in conflict with the Constitution. Even if the government manages to get the reforms passed by steamrollering the opposition, the Supreme Court could overturn these for being unconstitutional.

The controversy revolves around the EVMs, the insecure e-voting system for overseas Pakistanis, the handing over of some of the constitutionally mandated functions of an independent ECP to a government-controlled NADRA and the delimitation of constituencies based on the number of voters rather than total population. The government needs to review its position before putting the electoral reforms to vote in the Senate.

Editorial
Editorial
The Editorial Department of Pakistan Today can be contacted at: [email protected].

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