Pakistani youth split over fairness of coming elections

ISLAMABAD: A PILDAT’s opinion survey conducted from 422 members and alternates of PILDAT’s Youth Parliament finds the youth to torn over fairness and credibility of the next general elections as about 51.9% of surveyed youth believes the upcoming elections will be free, fair and credible while an almost equal number (46.9%) believes them to be otherwise.

The key findings of the ppinion survey conducted among the 422 members and alternates of PILDAT’s Youth Parliament Pakistan spread over 232 (85.3 %) of total 272 National Assembly constituencies in addition to Azad Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan and Overseas Pakistanis. The survey was conducted from April 7 to April 12.

Regarding EVMs deployment during elections, youth expressed a favourable stance with 76.7% believing that EVMs will be helpful in organising free, fair and credible elections, while 22.1% believe they would not be helpful.

Reasons for low youth voter turnout as 42.3% of youth respondents believe that the poor performance of politicians is the key reason for the their low youth voter turnout, followed by low level of trust in political Parties (42%) and the poor performance of the Election Commission (37.5%).

To a question as to what makes the youth support a political party, 37.9% of the respondents said they are motivated to support a political party due to its past performance, 36.5% base their support on the party’s election manifesto while 17.5% are motivated by the charismatic head of the party.

A large majority of the respondents(81.1%) , supported revival of student unions in all public and private educational institutes of Pakistan, while 16.9% are in disagreement over their revival.

Regarding their perception over Pakistan’s non participation from UN General Assembly voting on Russian invasion of Ukraine, 70.1% of the youth backed Islamabad’s abstention, but 20.6% supported the idea of voting in favour of the resolution while 5.5% favoured voting against it.

To a question about major challenges faced by Pakistan, 48.7% youth believes that inflation is the greatest challenge faced by the country, followed by unemployment (45.6%) and the poor quality of education across educational institutions in the country (36.3%).

As much as 96% youth feels strongly that public problems can never be effectively solved without strong local governments.On democratic set up, 84.9% of the respondents agreed that democracy, despite its weaknesses, is the best system for our country.

The Voice of Youth is a report series by PILDAT’s Youth Parliament Pakistan which showcases the input acquired from the largest and most representative group of Pakistani youth (aged 18-29 years) in Pakistan and overseas Pakistanis around the globe. This edition’s theme is ‘Current Affairs at a Glance’. Under this month’s edition, YPP conducted a public opinion survey from its members of Youth Parliament to seek their input regarding current socio-economic and political situation of Pakistan.