Polls termed best ever in Country’s history

ISLAMABAD—Thomas George Houlahan, senior fellow of Center for Security and Science, Washington, and member International Observers Group of the Center for Media and Democracy Pakistan (CMD) Wednesday termed the February Polls as ‘the best elections Pakistan has ever had’.
Addressing a symposium held to launch the final report of CMD International Observer Group on the polling process, the distinguished US think-tank said that in some ways, the recent elections in Pakistan were even better than the elections held in the western countries.
“For example, in United States of America, in general elections, the display of each and every ballot to party agents during ballot counting would be more or less unthinkable. Rather, the party agents are not been allowed into the room where the ballots are being counted,” he said adding that the presence of local and international observers in such a high number and the monitoring by a broadened media made it impossible to conduct any electoral anomaly.
“Due to the steps taken by President Musharraf and the ECP made the polls the best election the country ever had. Now this is upto the new government to take the country ahead on the path of progress and prosperity,” he said.
Secretary Election Commission of Pakistan Kanwar Muhammad Dilshad said that the country needed reforms in electoral laws to restrict the Nazims’ to refrain from influencing the electoral process especially during the conduct of the polls.
As our electoral laws are based on recommendations prepared by Lord Minto Commission in 1911, Pakistan should gear up working on reforms in the electoral laws with the help of civil society organizations, political parties, bar council and the media as has been already done in India and Bangladesh, he said.
Seeking proposals form the civil society and the media in this regard, Dilshad said the media had played a ‘crucial and positive role’ and the recent elections would help the country bring at par with the first world democracies.
Terming the elections ‘a historic and landmark achievement’, the Secretary ECP hoped that all the political parties would be satisfied with the performance of the ECP to ensure free, fair and transparent polls in the country.
“The election have laid a foundation for a true and strong democracy in the country this would help make the country a progressive, democratic and prosperous country,” he said and added that the local and international observers have termed the polls ‘free, fair and transparent’ which is a unique achievement of the country.
He said the Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon, US President, and leaders of the international community have also hailed the conduct of fair polls in the country.
Chairman CMD Ayub Munir urged the ECP and judiciary to take appropriate and immediate action on all the complaints lodged by the loosing candidates with substantial proof of alleged irregularities in polling process or counting of ballots.
“To improve the voters’ turn out, the observers noted that voters’ education program needs to be expanded and should be made more neutral. They noted that pre-election press advertisements from Election Commission and other ministries urging Pakistanis to vote carried a photograph of the President and was prominently displayed. This is not a statement of neutrality by any measure,” he said.
Felicitating President Musharraf, ECP and local administration for conducting free and safe polls, he said one must not forget the historic role played by Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto in this smooth and peaceful transition and give her the due credit. “She showed great faith in the ability of the state institutions to bring about this transition when everyone else had doubts about it,” he added.
He also recommended replacing the system of marking voters’ thumbs with ink by a more discreet process, perhaps using sprays or ink visible only under special lights. The CMD Observers urged the ECP to update the voters’ lists and cross-check to ID lists. In this regard, the observers proposed `that the two government bodies i.e. NADRA and ECP should coordinate with each other. Our observers noted such instances where people had ID cards but were still not registered as voters. This could have been avoided if everyone aving an ID card becomes a registered voter by default. This will also reduce workload for the ECP staff which goes into preparing voters’ lists.
In some Polling Stations there was a large presence of the party/candidates agents with promotional materials of their party. Our observers noted that this produced latent pressure on the voters, which caused a non-free expression of voters’ will. Number of party agents should be restricted to one or two per candidate and party badges should be banned in the polling stations.—Agencies