Out of 700,000 expats, only 4,000 become voters

ISLAMABAD: A little over half percent of overseas Pakistanis have so far registered themselves as voters to exercise their right to franchise through internet voting (iVoting) in thirty-seven federal and provincial constituencies where by-elections will be held on October 14.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is feeling uncomfortable over very dismal response of the Pakistani expatriates, an official told The News on condition of anonymity.

He said the electoral forum had expected that thousands of such voters would sign up because the Pakistani expats have been taking keen interest in the national affairs.

To give more time to the overseas Pakistanis in the wake of low registration, the ECP has extended the deadline, September 15, by two days for their more enrolment.

The ECP estimates that there are nearly 700,000 Pakistani expatriates hailing from these thirty-seven constituencies. By now, 4,000 plus of them have enlisted themselves as voters, which comes to just 0.57 percent.

The official said that some 500,000 expats out of the total overseas Pakistanis are in Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, who are mostly labourers, while the remaining are in other countries.

The expats are eligible to use the iVoting system if they possess the National Identity Card for Overseas Pakistani (NICOP), Pakistan Machine Readable Passport (MRP) and are registered voters in the constituencies where by-polls will be held. Through the iVoting service, the expats can cast their votes online in their respective constituencies from anywhere in the world using any internet-connected device.

The ECP has been running a campaign to attract a maximum number of overseas Pakistan to enroll themselves as voters and avail themselves of the iVoting facility.

By-elections will be held in eleven national constituencies and for twenty-six seats of the Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan assemblies.

On August 18, the Supreme Court ordered the ECP to ensure that the overseas Pakistanis exercise their right to vote in the upcoming by-polls as a pilot project. It handed this decision over a dozen petitions seeking directions for the ECP to make arrangements enabling overseas Pakistanis to cast their votes.

“Congratulations to overseas Pakistanis,” Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar had remarked while deciding these pleas, adding that it would be for the first time that expatriates would participate in the polling process. He ordered the ECP to conduct pilot project for iVoting by overseas Pakistanis in by-polls to ascertain the technical efficacy, secrecy and security of voting and present the results before Parliament as required under section 94 of the Elections Act 2017.

The top judge further directed the ECP to keep the results of the iVoting segregated from the basic balloting process so that it could not affect the election results in case any dispute arose. He pointed out that he had been receiving invitations to visit overseas Pakistanis in different countries who could donate around $1 billion for construction of dams. But he has not been be able to visit more than a couple of countries i.e. US and UK.

The issue of granting the voting rights to the overseas Pakistanis had been discussed since long and the ECP had been opposing it saying that it was not feasible for various reasons.