Overseas voter’s rights #ECPfail

Denied: 9.1 per cent of Pakistan’s overall voter base

The Supreme Court’s ruling over the expat Pakistani vote case opens up a Pandora’s box of allegations and accusations that can be hurled at various institutions over whose fault it was that a large chunk of eligible voters will not be able to vote in the May 11 general elections.

It does not take long, however, to identify protagonists of the two-year saga that ended like the finale of a B grade soap opera, with a terribly unsatisfactory conclusion to the plot and a little bit of cheap hope for the future sprinkled on the top.

The Overseas Voting Rights was a petition moved in the Supreme Court by Imran Khan in 2011. During the course of hearings, the ECP had insisted on two reasons why it could not allow expat Pakistanis to vote in elections 2013: no infrastructure, no legislation. Then, in February 2012, the Supreme Court and the ECP indicated that overseas Pakistanis would be able to vote in the upcoming elections. That was a glorious victory for Captain Sahib, who then directed his attention towards changing his Tsunami to a Tsunama and promptly forgot all about the case.

However, on September 26, 2012, the ECP had deferred the overseas Pakistani’s right to vote citing that it wouldn’t be possible for general elections 2013. Again, the ECP representatives maintained that Pakistan did not have the technological infrastructure to conduct secure and transparent polls overseas. Furthermore, the ECP insisted that it did not have the required legislation from the PPP-led government for international polling.

Naturally, the solution to this deadlock was first, getting the infrastructure and second, the legislation. For this purpose, the Supreme Court summoned NADRA officials, many months too late, to give an explanation over how polls could be conducted abroad. NADRA told the chief justice that it did, in fact, have the technological know-how to make overseas polling possible. Strangely, though, NADRA said the systems would be tested in early May, and for this purpose, the Foreign Office had sought permission from at least 10 countries. Testing merely days before the elections? Really? Shouldn’t that have been done months and months ago, since the case itself had been in the court for years and the election announcement had come two months ago?

While it is commendable that NADRA scrambled to action to ensure expat polling, and while the Foreign Ministry did not dilly dally in seeking approval from other governments for the elections, it must be remembered that overall, these efforts served no purpose. You cannot test your international polling booths just ten days before the elections. You cannot guarantee the security of the system or the accuracy of the ballot count. In the same vein, who is to blame for action being taken so late? Why were overseas Pakistanis, who make up at least 9.1 per cent of Pakistan’s overall voter base, not made a priority? If every Pakistani vote counts, then is the Pakistani vote from abroad any less of value?

NADRA and the Foreign Ministry, then, get less flak for this than the two institutions that had locked horns over the issue for two years. And it became apparent that in this dance-off between the Supreme Court and the ECP, the government was the biased referee.

When NADRA and the Foreign Office gave the green signal for conducting overseas elections, the ECP then turned to the government for the last argument that seems to always work for everyone, including the media, the Supreme Court and the civil society: no legislation. Curiously though, while the ECP has the wisdom and the authority to reject election hopefuls because their ideological views were questionable, for everything related to bringing some real change to the electoral system, it needs permission or legislation.

The ECP, in planning this election, has been notoriously erratic. But the one thing it has been consistent with is that it has not allowed for major policy changes in the electoral system. This was evident from quashing the NOTA ballot and showing flagrant disregard for the Supreme Court’s ruling of June 2012 regarding the electoral reforms petition moved by Abid Hassan Manto. As I wrote before, the NOTA ballot could have been possible had the ECP not refused to seek legislation from the government, which was not hard to do. An ordinance takes one day to be signed by the president and be approved. The ECP never asked and the government never offered.

The same thing happened with overseas Pakistani’s right to vote; the ECP said, “Okay, we may have the technology, but we still don’t have the legislation.” In the subsequent reply that was sought by the Supreme Court, the government took ECP’s side and came up with an excellent reason why it can’t pass the required legislation: no mandate.

The government maintained that it was beyond its mandate to make a policy decision. Never mind the bailout plan the caretaker government has silently accepted ‘in principle’ from the IMF that will allow the fund to introduce major restructuring of public sector enterprises and banking sector. Because that is not a policy decision at all! At the same time, this government has refused to try Musharraf, has failed figure out a fix to the electricity load-shedding, failed to provide security to the former coalition partners who are clearly being targeted and has failed to implement the decisions of the Supreme Court for the very elections it has taken up oath for.

Anyone else seeing the synchronized dance here?

Naturally, amidst the government’s hesitation in drafting legislation and the ECP’s never-ending tantrums and foot dragging over the issue, it is no wonder that the case was closed less than 12 days before the election with the sad hope that maybe next time, expat Pakistanis would not be so unlucky.

Meanwhile, let us remind ourselves of some key facts about this very important group that has been excluded from the electoral process. Overseas Pakistani workers are the second largest source of foreign exchange remittances to Pakistan after exports and over the last several years, the foreign exchange remittances have maintained a steady rising trend, with a recorded increase of 21.8 percent from $6.4 million in 2007‐08 to $7.8 million during 2008‐09. In 2009‐10, Pakistanis sent home $9.4 billion, the 11th largest in the world. By 2012, Pakistan increased its ranking to 10th in the world for remittances sent home at $13 billion per annum.

The right to vote from abroad is established in about 115 countries, according to a report from 2007 by the Institute of International Democracy and Electoral Assistance. In 2005 Iraq national elections, the country voting program allowed voting in 36 cities and 14 countries through external polling stations. Indonesia, which allows for a mixed procedure of personal, postal, and proxy voting to its expats had a cost of $6 million only in the 2004 general elections.

Why overseas Pakistanis were turned down from voting in this election, no one knows. Was it because the PTI has a strong international voter base? It would not have mattered; the PTI’s chances of a sweeping victory in Pakistan are very few when it is competing with so many mainstream political parties with much more seasoned politicians.

It is important that this case not be forgotten for the next elections, as it is too late for anything to be done now. The ECP, then, must be held accountable if it fails the Pakistani community abroad once again. But then again, there are five years more to go and we might only know in 2018, ten days before the election, if the policy of exclusion is to be maintained.

The writer is Web Editor at Pakistan Today and tweets @aimamk