Saga of electoral reforms

Given that electoral culture of a country keeps morphing in resonance to the obtaining socio-political and economic milieu the existing laws anywhere would tend to fall short of ensuring perfect conditions for fair and free elections. The election laws and agencies responsible for their implementation must therefore undergo constant scrutiny and, if and when warranted, must also undergo revision. In Pakistan, we have a plethora of acts, ordinances and orders to conduct free and fair elections, yet results of the exercise are invariably contested by those who lose, and often not without some reasons. The outcome of the 2013 general election too became controversial with Tehreek-e-Insaf protesting against PML (N)'s victory from atop a stationary container opposite the Parliament House. The government reacted by forming a 33-member bipartisan parliamentary committee in 2014 that was tasked to formulate a comprehensive electoral reforms law. What that committee achieved over the last two years or so was its second interim report. Prepared by its sub-committee, it was presented to the National Assembly by its chairman Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in the form of a draft bill. Since the interim report lacks unanimity of the committee it would be in the public domain for about a month for comments and suggestions. So, in essence, we are still inching towards having comprehensive electoral reforms. But it is certainly a progress over the past, like the one the first interim report of the committee achieved by way of paving the ground for legislation of the 22nd Constitutional Amendment which changed the eligibility of criteria of members of the Election Commission of Pakistan. Described as the Election Bill 2017 the second interim report is more progressive and seeks to come to grips with contentious issues like empowerment of the ECP, predicating validity of an election to certain percentage of women voters, delimitation of constituencies, revision of electoral rolls, allocation of symbols and election expenses. Given there is plenty of general and specific opinion on these matters, coupled with the 30-member committee's own experience, there was perhaps no need to cause any further delay in legislating a set of comprehensive electoral reforms.
But now when draft of the Election Bill 2017 is in public domain there is an opportunity to offer a few suggestions. For one, the most crucial reform could be the absolute, uncontested empowerment of the Election Commission of Pakistan. ECP members may not be only from the judiciary; they may also be from other services having suitable experience. Also, there is no need to observe some kind of provincial quota while inducting new members. And once a bureaucrat becomes a member he or she should stay with the commission till his or her retirement. At the same time, the ECP should have adequate financial and administrative powers to conduct polls. Quite rightly then interim report envisages that specific instructions of the election commission would be treated as orders of a high court and that its expenditures would be borne by the federal government like those of the Supreme Court. The interim report has hit the nail right on the head - the issue of turnout of women voters. In case their turnout is less than 10 percent the ECP "may presume that that woman voters have been restrained through an agreement from casting votes and may declare the polling at one or more polling stations or election in the whole of constituency void". But the whole truth is that the recommendations of the sub-committee did not sit well with the main committee which wanted the same to be 5 percent. The latter decided that the final decision would be taken at the next meeting. How come circa 2016 the elected representatives of people still want to persevere in archaic mindset. One would think even 10 percent is ridiculously low; it should be at least twice that number. The civil society is therefore expected to forcefully condemn such a mindset and oppose political deals and compromises on discouraging women from casting their votes.