Imran orders stepping up efforts to introduce e-voting

By News Desk

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday said electronic voting is essential to ensure transparency in the next general election, and directed his cabinet to prepare a feasibility report of the process on priority.

Chairing a meeting of federal cabinet here, he said all necessary actions would be taken to end corruption in elections “as witnessed in the recent Senate polls”. “We want next the general elections to be fair and transparent and thus want to initiate the e-voting process well ahead of time,” he said.

The Prime Minister also ordered working out details for the purchase of electronic voting machines (EVMs), adding he would also get regular updates on the progress of project. He also said the introduction of online voting for overseas Pakistanis “is also a matter of priority”.

Khan said the Senate elections exposed how political leaders “used money to buy votes”. He added that politicians like “Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, through money laundering, transferred national wealth to their bank accounts abroad”.

He mentioned a report of Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity (Facti) which revealed that that $1 trillion was taken out each year from the poor countries to developed states. Presently, he said, $7 trillion of the stolen assets was parked in those safe havens, causing irreparable loss to developing countries, including Pakistan.

The Prime Minister said money laundering severely weakened a country’s institutions. He said in past tenures, ruling parties launched the projects “with mega kickbacks” and resultantly the common man paid the price in shape of inflation and heavy loans.

“Such politicians normalise corruption in a society, bribe media houses and removes checks and balances to ease their money-laundering chain,” he said. He said a society which set such standards of corruption faced an ethical downfall, adding “a nation gets destroyed when it loses the ability to ensure socioeconomic justice”.