The role played by various actors in the desecration of the National Assembly on Wednesday was caught by the camera’s eye, the obscenities recorded by the sound system and everything broadcast both by mainstream and social media. The way the ministers who came straight from the Cabinet meeting encouraged fellow MNAs to initiate the unseemly melee provides a clue about the direction from where the orders came. The bad name that the ruling party earned will remain a source of embarrassment to it for a long time. If the aggressive behaviour was meant to silence the Leader of the Opposition, it proved to be counterproductive as Shahbaz Sharif continued to deliver his speech for four successive days instead of finishing in one. The government should have instead entered into an agreement with the opposition aimed at facilitating both sides in expressing their views without being disturbed. Even now the government needs to approach the opposition with a proposal of the sort.
The government maintains that it wants to introduce electoral reforms in order to put an end to the common complaints about election malpractices. In order to be widely acceptable the reforms should have been thoroughly debated in house committees and then in the National Assembly and Senate. What the government did instead was to pass 21 laws, including those related to electoral reforms, in one go without discussion. With the opposition rejecting the reforms, any elections held under the proposed rules would remain controversial.
No ordinary law passed by the National Assembly can take away, or hand over to any other body, the powers given to the Election Commission of Pakistan under Article 219. The government wants to hand over some of the important powers of the independent ECP to NADRA which, being a government body, can be easily manipulated by the ruling party to win the elections.
The ECP has objected to 28 out of the total 62 amendments proposed by the government. The Commission holds that electronic voting machines cannot be introduced without first determining whether they are capable of conducting free and fair elections, can operate in conditions of hot weather, loadshedding etc and can ensure the accuracy, secrecy and transparency of elections. The government needs to heed the ECP’s advice.
