UNDP wonders who’s telling stories to Imran Khan

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Tuesday rubbished Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan’s allegations of interruption in May 2013 general polls, saying that none of its consultants were ejected from the offices of the returning officers.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, UNDP Country Director Marc-Andre Franche said that, contrary to Khan’s allegations, none of the outfit’s computers were shut down after the victory speech of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Chairman Nawaz Sharif.

Earlier, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had also denied Khan’s claim that a UNDP election result gathering project was halted after Sharif’s speech.

“On May 11, 2013 (election day), six UNDP consultants provided technical assistance to returning officers in relation to the new computerised result management system. None of the consultants reported being ejected from the offices of returning officers or witnessing their computers being shut down,” said the UNDP country director.

Speaking at a public rally in Bahawalpur on Friday, Khan had claimed that soon after Sharif’s “victory speech”, the data operators stopped sending computerised result copies to the ECP. Khan alleged that the operators were told by the returning officers to slow down, and later handwritten results were sent to the ECP to manipulate results, which led to the defeat of PTI candidates.

UNDP SUPORTED ECP TO HOLD TRANSPARENT ELECTIONS:

The UNDP country director said the election project titled “Electoral Cycle Support to the Election Commission of Pakistan” supported ECP in holding transparent elections. He said UNDP provided similar technical assistance to election management bodies in over 60 countries.

“Through UNDP support, over 330,000 presiding officers and assistant presiding officers were trained on basic polling procedures, 222 ECP district officers were trained to conduct and coordinate district wise voter education campaigns to encourage vulnerable groups, including rural women, minorities and people with disabilities to cast their votes,” said Franche.

He added that 600,000 Tamper Evident Bags were introduced for the first time in Pakistan to safeguard result sheets during transportation from polling stations to the offices of the returning officer and 1,148 government officials from the districts were trained on the new result management system.

He said the aim of the project was to support the ECP to prepare and conduct the general elections. The support focused on working with the ECP to develop and implement a comprehensive voter education campaign to improve voter turnout, especially among women, youth and other marginalised communities. UNDP also provided technical assistance to the ECP to develop a computerised election results management system.

Earlier, a senior official of the ECP who was involved in the data gathering process claimed that the UNDP project had nothing to do with the announcement of election results as it was an exercise aimed at data gathering for analysis and future reference. According to the officials, ECP still has scanned result of all polling stations of the country from all 849 constituencies.