2018 was a ‘heavy year’ for ECP

ISLAMABAD: For the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the year 2018 has gone down as the heaviest 12-month period, witnessing the largest ever general election in Pakistan and a number of other important events, dotting its record.

The most significant feature of 2018, which is now history, the ECP got the opportunity to implement the historic, the Elections Act, 2017, which was enacted in October, empowering the electoral body in many ways and it was able to implement it during the general election and before that during the eventful electioneering.

It goes without saying that July 25, 2018 general election was the electoral exercise in which a record well over 100 million registered voters were qualified to exercise their voting right, bringing in a new political party i.e. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf to form government for the first time in the Centre, besides capturing Punjab from the well-trenched Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.

The general election saw loud voices coming from mainstream political parties about the alleged failure of the much-touted Result Transmission System (RTS). But despite all this, things got going and leading to formation of a parliamentary panel on probing why and how the system failed to deliver.

This election was followed by another landmark exercise of conducting bye-elections in as many as 36 constituencies of the National Assembly as well the provincial assemblies in October. Quite interestingly, the ECP again put into practice the RTS notwithstanding its failure in the general election. The RTS, though yielded far better results. The reason of RTS usage is mandatory under the Elections Act, 2017.

However, the critical element, which led to holding of the general election in July 25, was the efficient carrying out of the delimitation of the constituencies in early March on the basis of provisional data of the national census. There were some strong voices of concerns from Sindh in relation to the delimitation drive, which died down gradually.

Moreover, beside the delimitation of constituencies, the holding of general election, bye-elections, the ECP also managed to conduct local government bye-elections, mainly in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

With these major exercises, largely carried out successfully, there are some key areas in which the ECP failed to deliver, no matter whatever the causes or reasons of these failures. For instance, the much-publicised Political Finance Wing, which is headed by a former regional election commissioner Haleem Shahab. Moreover, there are no specialised persons available in the Wing to deal with the related matters. The Wing is presently looking into election expenses of political parties. “Indeed, while dealing with finances, you have to have expertise, which are presently not around in the Wing. Without having experts, the Wing may not be able to do the needful,” conceded a senior official at the Election Commission. However, he hastened to add that the ECP or the wing had the option of hiring services of a chartered accountant or an expert in tax-related matters.

The other important matter is the now ruling PTI’s foreign funding case, filed way back in November 2014 by former close aide of Prime Minister Imran Khan, Akbar S Babar. It continues to linger on. Though, a major breakthrough was made in July, when the ECP wrote to the State Bank of Pakistan to collect and share banking transactions and accounts of PTI with regards to its foreign funding. The State Bank complied with it and shared the data some months back. However, the Election Commission’s three-member scrutiny committee is yet to furnish its report and submit it to the Election Commission despite having the data before it. Babar alleges irregularities in the party's foreign funding.

The committee, headed by the Election Commission’s Director General Muhammad Arshad and has two senior audit officers from the defence forces, was mandated to vet the record and report back to the Election Commission, which has not done so and hence, the foreign funding case continues to be pending.