26/05/2017
ELECTORAL REFORMS THE ONLY WAY OUT FOR SUSTAINABLE PEACE AND GOVERNANCE
Speech of Mr. Kanwar Muhammad Dilshad, Chairman
National Democratic Foundation
On 20th May 2017 at Islamabad
Excellences, ladies and gentlemen!
Since its creation in 1947, Pakistan has been going through a turmoil of inefficient and ineffective governance system, which has grossly led to an unrest in the society. Pakistan, though having rich natural and human resource, has not capitalized opportunities due to many factors, among which unsustainable governance, inefficient bureaucracy and arbitrary democratic system plagued with problems and corruption are the key factors. The democratic, governance and judicial system in Pakistan is widely seen to be arbitrary and corrupt and has to be changed.
Yet Pakistan is seeing another major opportunity of transformation in the form of CPEC, however, our concern is that its true benefits should reach to the poor masses who are living in a state of misery mainly in rural areas but also in urban centres. It is beyond imagination that how a labourer earning 2-3 thousand rupees a month is surviving these days. The stories of mismanagement in government social safety net programs, such as BISP are the beauty lines of every newspaper every day, which is simply due to inefficient government. The older people and pensioners once used to happily surviving on the government saving schemes are at the mercy of open market interest rates. All okay reports and onset or completion of mega projects do not represent ground realities, my dears!
As Pakistan is now a key player of one-road, one-belt program, the sustainable peace and governance here is a key to success of this program which is likely to bring changes and transformations in many countries in the region and beyond and perhaps show a light to the poor peasants of this country, who are at the mercy of mill owners and importers of agricultural products from India.
The sustainable peace and governance is related with an efficient and transparent electoral system which is not good in the present form. The transparency of elections of 2013 has been widely questioned by all the parties which has led to turmoil in politics during the last 5 years and challenged peace in the country and harnessing of economic benefits. I will not hesitate to say that the present and previous democratic governments have wasted 10 years of the nation, and by introducing constitutional amendment 18, the federation has become weakened. Everyone had high expectations with this amendment but it has proved to be lethal for the federation and should be immediately withdrawn. At the top of it, the media which is an important pillar of democracy and government has also not behaved responsibly and helped in national agenda setting.
The National Democratic Foundation strongly advocates for electoral reforms prior to 2018 elections, which will be foundation stone of free, fair and transparent elections and peace in the country in future, success of CPEC and regional peace. I wish that the opposition leadership could have demanded rigorous electoral reforms rather than wasting time of the nation, media and its own time in making protests on less important issues in the country. My philosophy is to nip the evil in the bud, rather than going for hunting the evils but not attacking on the breeding ground of corruption and inefficient democratic system which in fact invites protests by masses and martial-law.
The NDF, since its inception is advocating for electoral reforms, and has been organizing roundtable discussions, and advocating reforms in print and electronic media to achieve this novel goal. I would like to capitalize this opportunity of meeting with you to kick-off some ideas, which the members of Advisory Council of NDF, media and donor community in Pakistan should advocate until the goal is achieved. The major international donors like UNDP, European Union, USAID, DFID and other European countries could help reach our voice in discussions with the politicians of Pakistan and in other countries. We have already submitted 25 recommendations to the Chairman of Parliament Committee for Electoral Reforms, Mr. Ishaq Dar, Chief Justice, Speaker of National Assembly, Chairman Senate, Heads of all the political parties and important politicians. Besides short-term cosmetics in electoral process which we had discussed in a Round Table held in March 2017, I would like to present some of the long-term recommendations:
1. Appointment of caretaker Prime Minister is the most important point. The caretaker Prime Minister should be a vibrant personality who is physically and mentally fit to undertake stressful workload. A committee comprising of Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, and Chairman Senate should jointly select 3 names for the Caretaker Prime Minister, and final vetting should be done by the Army Chief and Chief Justice of Pakistan. Since, the Army Chief has to manage the internal and external security of the country, he should be highly vigilant with the national political, financial, environmental and social issues, and his role in the selection of Caretaker Prime Minister should be recognised.
2. The tenure of the government should be reduced to 4 years meaning thereby that all assemblies including local government should be dissolved after every 4 years for re-election. The speed of technology and international development directly impacts the velocity of time, therefore, the window of opportunity for a government to perform should be rationalized in line with the aspirations of people.
3. The quota for dedicated seats for women in the parliament should be eliminated, rather every contesting party should be directed to give 10% of the seats to women.
4. Political leaders should be allowed to function as political party’s office bearers for only 2 consecutive terms to ensure that dynasty politics does not grow in our political culture and that cross section of the political party members should get the opportunity to rise to the leadership cadres.
5. Additional category of ‘none for above’ candidates should be added to the ballot paper to give the legitimate right to the voters who are not satisfied with any of the elections contesting candidates. Thus opening way of re-elections for constituencies where majority of voters reject candidates nominated by political parties. Registered voters in a given constituency should also be given the right to declare ‘no-confidence’ against contesting candidates nominated by political parties (including independent candidates). Such declaration should be documented by the majority of voters in the constituency in a written form and submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan to formalize re-composition of candidates or announce re-elections. This system is succefully practised in Bangladesh and India.
6. We strongly feel that the ECP should work like an independent institution and it should not be under the influence of the government. The Election Commission should be constituted by the joint parliament and vetted by the Judicial Committee instead of parliamentary committee. This system is being practiced in Canada, Thailand and Indonesia.
7. The development funds for parliamentarians should be vanished and given to the Local Government.
8. The electronic voting machine system has become controversial in USA and France. In India High Courts of 3 states declared this system as unreliable. The Assembly of state of Delhi has also declared that the electronic voting machine system has been tempered. Therefore, the political parties and ECP should drop the idea of electronic voting system as it will further complicate the system and will create more doubts.
9. All the winning independent candidates should be made mandatory not to join any political party, whereas they should form independent group in the parliament.
10. If any political party wins less than 10% of the national or each provincial assembly seats, then all the seats of that party should be transferred to the majority party. This will ensure eradication of black-mailing and pressure groups. This system is also being successfully practiced in Turkey.
11. There should be separate Returning officers for the national and provincial assembly seats which will reduce workload on them for legal and administrative matters.
12. In each Polling station, a Polling Assistant should be appointed only for the election day who will observe the ex*****on of election and closely observe the attitude and behaver of political parties, polling agents, elections and administrative staff. He / she should be a retired civil or military official or a community notable from the same constituency but not having affiliation with any party.
13. The Polling Agent at each Polling station should be given observer status and his/her attendance in the Polling station should be mandatory during the election hours and attendance sheet should be submitted to ECP along with the election result of a given constituency after due verification by the concerned Presiding Officer.
14. The consolidation of the results should be done under section 39 of the Representation of People Act 1976 and not rely on Form 14. The Returning Officer must physically verify [recounting] the votes to verify and validate contents of Form 14, in order to fill accurate and verified data on Form 16.
15. Along with Form 16 [Polling station wise result summary by the Returning Officer and Form 17 [candidate wise result summary by the Returning Officer], the Returning Officer must submit Form, 14 [summary of counting by the Presiding Officer] and form 15 [Ballot paper count by Presiding Officer] on mandatory. By adopting this way, the ECP shall have complete record in its possession rather than being dependent on lower tiers and the number of complaints to Election Tribunal will automatically reduce.
16. Form 14-16-17 should be uploaded on ECP website as soon as these are received.
17. The Returning Officers in person, should be held responsible for rigging. For the purpose, amended version of Section 68 of the Representation of People Act 1975 should be adopted.
18. The ECP should be required to submit all collected record about the sources of party funds to the Speaker National Assembly for debate and conclusion on it at the level of National Assembly. This system is also being practised in India.
19. The Election Commission of Pakistan should be given observer role in the intra-party elections under Political Parties Order 2002 Article 11 and 12.
Ladies and gentlemen
I thank you for your time and listening to me patiently and keenly. I am sure that you will continue to advocate NDF for better governance, peace and development in Pakistan and in the region for some of the ideas which have been mentioned by
Dr. Inayatullah.
Thank you very much.
Kanwar Muhammad Dilshad
+92 300 856 9691
