ECP takes action

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has shown that it will not take interference in elections, and certainly not the kind of blatant interference that KP Transport Minister Shah Mohammad Khan was supposed to have committed in the recent first phase of the province's local body elections. The ECP investigations and recording of evidence showed that the attacking of polling stations, kidnapping of polling staff, snatching of election material, harassing and threatening polling staff and other investigation agencies and had committed corrupt practices. It seems he thought his status would allow him to get away with anything .Indeed; it seems that if the ECP had taken the action it did, it would have been left without any credibility as an independent and powerful body that could hold elections that were free and fair.

It has only now started building that credibility, which was seriously dented after the electronic failure during the general election, which led to results being held up. Its credibility was further enhanced with its prompt action in the Daska by-election, where it ordered re-polling after irregularities came to light. Now that it has ordered a minister unseated, over a local body election at that, it should start developing that fear of the consequences that should stop anyone from trying to rig an election, even by more gentle methods than those apparently used by Mr Khan, apparently in favour of his son, who was a candidate.

The ECP is moving to a stage where it is not going to be possible for the Prime Minister to ignore it, as he did when it wrote to him asking that it not violate the code of conduct by a rally. The Prime Minister should not fear, so much the ECP, as the consequences of not abiding by the regulations it administers. And that is as is supposed to be, if elections are to truly represent the will of the people.