CGEP NEWS AND EVENTS

Jun 17, 2007

Questions about Fresh Electoral Rolls in Pakistan, PILDAT Executive Director Articulates in Daily Dawn

The Election Commission of Pakistan has started displaying the draft of the fresh computerized electoral rolls in the country for inspection by the public. The process of display and receiving of complaints and applications for additions will continue for 21 days up to July 3, 2007. The preparation of electoral rolls is one of the most important steps in the electoral process and any weakness in the process will directly impact the credibility of the election outcome. It is therefore very important that citizens should examine the displayed draft electoral rolls, point out discrepancies, register as voters and verify their entries if they are already registered. It is equally important that the citizens, the Election Commission and other concerned entities should closely examine the questions relating to the electoral rolls. These questions are extremely important in view of the fact that electoral process is already under criticism and public trust in it is rather low. Secondly because it is the first time in the history of Pakistan that computerized electoral rolls are being prepared with an expense of around 1 billion Rupees.

Article 219 of the Constitution of Pakistan stipulates that the Chief Election Commissioner shall be charged with the duty of preparing Electoral Rolls for election to the National Assembly and the Provincial Assemblies and revising such rolls annually. The preparation and revision of electoral rolls is governed by ‘The Electoral Rolls Act, 1974 (Act No. XXI of 1974)’ as amended by ‘Electoral Rolls (Amendment) Ordinance’ (No. LI of 2000) dated 27th September 2000 and ‘The Electoral Roll Rules, 1974’ 

NADRA had prepared the Electoral Rolls for the Local Government Election 2000-2001 and General election 2002 with the help of its database. The 2002 rolls showed an addition of 5.5 million new voters due to the age of voting being reduced from 21 years to 18 years. Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) was reportedly not satisfied with the quality of electoral rolls prepared by NADRA and also felt that a huge amount was charged by NADRA for the service. NADRA admits to shortcomings in the Electoral Rolls prepared in 2000-2001 and in 2002 but adds that the work was done in a very short time and some saving was also affected in the agreed amount which was returned to the ECP.

The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) initiated the process of preparing fresh electoral rolls on April 15, 2006 and decided to opt for door-to-door enumeration of voters instead of using the NADRA database as a baseline. The preparation of Electoral Rolls will cost around Rs. 1 Billion out of which a contract worth Rs. 560 Million (around US $ 9.5 Million) has already been awarded to Calsoft which is a Joint Venture of three Pakistani companies including TCS. The project is funded by USAID and managed by a US non-governmental organization IFES on behalf of USAID. Many experts believe that NADRA could have done the job in much less amount of money and time. NADRA and its capability to process and manage huge amount of data has won wide international acclaim and it is intriguing why its database collected and compiled over the past many years could not be used for preparing fresh electoral rolls. Election Commission officials cite some electoral laws which do not permit use of NADRA facility. If it is so, how this facility was used back in 2002 in contravention of the law? And why can’t law be amended to facilitate a project of such vital public interest?

As of January 2007, NADRA had issued around 54 Million CNICs which shows that its database is more comprehensive than the latest draft electoral rolls. It is issuing around 20, 000 CNICs per day against a capacity of around 75, 000 CNICs per day. Although it is essential that the CNIC numbers filled in by the Voters in their Voters Registration Form should be verified to check against any mis-statement, ECP does not seem to have any plans to ask NADRA to verify the CNIC numbers in the new Electoral Rolls. ECP had reportedly asked NADRA to share their database with ECP so that they (ECP) could use it for preparing fresh Electoral Rolls but NADRA, again reportedly, refused to do that. NADRA cites security of data as the reason for not sharing the data but says they had offered to ECP and the Government to use NADRA data and services for preparing fresh Electoral Rolls. This could have been done by assigning the work of Electoral Rolls to NADRA. ECP maintains that their rules (Rule 5 of the ‘The Electoral Rolls Rules, 1974) bind them to hold house-to-house enumeration. It is a pity that two important public institutions could not agree on a mechanism to work together for an important public project like electoral rolls.

Enumeration commenced on July 14, 2006 and was to conclude on Sep 11, 2006 but the last date of collection of Forms by enumerators was extended to September 30, 2006. Initially, Computerised National Identification Card (CNIC) was declared to be a pre-requisite for registration as a voter but later the ECP announced that the old NICs (Which were declared to be without legal value by the Government of Pakistan) will also be acceptable for the purpose of registration as a voter. NADRA claims that the issuance of CNICs picked up pace (Around 900,000 CNICs per month) soon after the ECP declared CNICs to be a prerequisite for registration as a voter but the volume dropped down to around 500, 000 CNICs per month after the condition was withdrawn. NADRA charges R. 75 fee for issuance of an CNIC. As issuance of CNICs to women is lagging behind, NADRA feels that if an incentive of issuing CNICs free of cost to women for a period of three months or so is done, it would help to increase the number of CNICs issued.

The publication of the draft electoral rolls for inviting claims and objections was set for January 20, 2007 by the ECP but the process has been delayed by about 5 months till June 2007. This means that the Final Electoral Rolls which were to be ready by May 30, 2007 will not be ready before the end of October 2007.

The proposed Electoral Rolls will not contain pictures of voters although it would have increased the utility of the rolls and would have provided an additional and sometime the only ready means of identification of voters. India and Bangladesh are keen to update its electoral rolls to include photographs and various other countries such as Uganda and East Timor already have Electoral Rolls with Voters pictures. NADRA thinks that it can provide the service by linking the Electoral Rolls to its database. In fact, a broader consultative process with the citizens would have helped ECP in setting better terms of reference for the Electoral Rolls contractors. 

ECP has recently announced that around 52 million voters have sought to be registered as voters through the enumeration process. This low number has sent shock waves among political parties and serious observers of electoral process. There were 71.86 Million voters as per the Electoral Rolls used in 2002 General Election. This number should have grown to around 82 Million in 2007 as per the historical rate of growth of 2.7 % per annum. This gap between the number of voters registered through the latest exercise of enumeration and the number to which it should have grown using the number of voters in 2002 as a base is around 27 Million or around 33 %. This difference is informally explained by ECP as due to duplications and/or Bogus Votes in the electoral rolls as these rolls were not computerized and there was no reliable system to check duplications. If this is the extent of duplication or bogus votes that one third of the electoral rolls were fictitious, then it is a very sad commentary on the competence of all concerned institutions including above all the Election Commission of Pakistan. This makes the results of all past elections a greater suspect than they have always been considered by a sizable number of citizens. This gap, therefore, remains unexplained and is a source of concern. Many political parties have complained that votes in their traditional supporters’ areas were deliberately left out. It is anticipated that there will be many questions by the public and political parties about such a wide gap between the old rolls and the new ones.

The entry of the voters data from the collected forms has been undertaken in the Data Centre of the contractors located in Lahore. The data entry operation was not open to public. One of the few fortunate persons who could undertake a conducted tour of the Data Centre while voters’ data was being processed was the former U.S Ambassador Ryan Crocker. If the system was open to public observation, it would have likely enhanced public trust in the system.

The process to file an objection or claim to enter a new voter’s name is rather complicated and unless it is simplified, a significant numbers of voters may not be able to register or review the draft rolls. It makes a lot of sense that anyone with a CNIC should be able to register as a voter on the spot.

The Election Commission insists that the draft rolls can be viewed only at the 45, 403 designated display centres throughout the country. Given the fact that only 21 days are available to public and political parties to review the draft rolls and file objections and/or applications for additions, it would have made a lot more sense if these lists were provided to anyone who wants these on a nominal payment. The ECP should, in fact, have placed the rolls on its website so that it could be accessed by any party or individual and reviewed at their leisure. The Election Commission should initiate amendment to law if any law hinders the wider circulation and review of the electoral rolls.

Published on Op-Ed page of Daily Dawn: June 17, 2007

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