Electoral integrity

Many political parties are stressing that general elections be held as soon as possible. One must ask whether doing so would bring any positive changes to the country. ‘No’ is the clear and obvious answer. This is because the freedom and fairness of elections always ends up being disputed, kicking off a never-ending blame game between the winning and losing parties.

The ultimate result is that valuable time and energy is diverted away from solving the country’s problems and a no-confidence vote or some other kind of move is initiated to topple the incumbent government. Our country cannot make any progress under these circumstances. We must do a better job of ensuring the integrity of the electoral process in order to overcome this challenge.

Engr Asim Nawab

Islamabad