A FEW weeks ago, I had tried to summarise a case for some key electoral reforms proposals (‘A case for urgent poll reforms’) in this paper. Today I wish to share some thoughts on how can we move forward on reforming the electoral process.

In a democratic system, parliament must be at the centre of electoral reform efforts. Parliament had earlier accomplished significant reforms through the 18th Constitutional Amendment and by adopting laws such as the Election Laws (Amendment) Act 2011 making the registration of voters and casting of votes contingent upon the production of the CNIC. This law alone drastically improved the electoral rolls by eliminating a large number of multiple entries of voters which were a major source of bogus votes.

In August 2012, the Senate of Pakistan constituted a Special Committee on Electoral Issues which, after extensive deliberations and engagement with various stakeholders, presented a comprehensive report to the Senate in March 2013. A similar exercise was undertaken earlier in the National Assembly by the Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs and its sub-committee whose recommendations were used by the Senate committee to produce a coordinated set of electoral reform recommendations.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should have given priority to electoral reforms.

However, as international experience indicates, the prospects of enacting or implementing electoral reforms diminish as countries approach election time. The recommendations of the two parliamentary committees, very unfortunately, could not be passed as constitutional amendments and laws. A set of 24 amendments in the Representation of People Act, 1976 were also proposed by the Election Commission of Pakistan in January 2013 but the outgoing (13th) National Assembly did not pass these amendments.

The previous National Assembly can take credit for passing quite a few electoral reform laws but it failed to keep up the momentum for electoral reforms by not passing the laws as recommended by the two parliamentary committees and the ECP.

Given the consensus electoral reform recommendations by parliament before the 2013 elections, after coming to power in June last year, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should have given priority to electoral reforms on his government’s legislative agenda and brought constitutional and legal amendments before parliament. Instead, it took him over one year to write to the speaker, National Assembly, for the formation of a new parliamentary committee on electoral reforms — and after the Pakistan Tehreek- i-Insaf (PTI) chairman brought his agitation to the streets.

In view of the comprehensive reform proposals put together earlier by parliament, it makes little sense to form another committee to undertake the same exercise. The route instead should have been to table various constitutional and legal amendments based on earlier recommendations while amendments could be moved through deliberations in parliament and its committees to refine these amendments where necessary before their passage.

However, now that in its wisdom the PML-N has decided to reinvent the wheel on electoral reforms by forming another parliamentary electoral reforms committee, it must complete its mandated work within the three-month time allocated to it. More than half of the three-month period has already lapsed.

In the current scenario when the public appetite for electoral reforms has been whipped up, and rightly so, by the on-going agitation — a whopping 85pc of respondents supported or strongly supported electoral reforms in a nationwide public opinion poll conducted by Pildat/Gallup in July/August 2014 — it is important that the honourable chair and members of the committee complete their mandated task by Oct 24, 2014 when their three-month term ends.

Three PTI legislators and some of their allies may choose to stay away from the proceedings of the committee but they have officially not boycotted them. Now that they are not pressing for the acceptance of their resignations, one should hope that they will join the proceedings. Even if they don’t, the committee should proceed as the PTI has reportedly already submitted its proposals to it. Any fine-tuning can be done when the bill comes before the plenary session of the National Assembly.

However, no meaningful exercise on electoral reforms can be productive while so many serious allegations have been levelled against the conduct of the 2013 general elections. The integrity and competence of the ECP has been called into question by the chairman of the second largest political party in Pakistan who has also repeatedly spoken of an alleged grand conspiracy involving the then chief justice of Pakistan, the subordinate judiciary, the former chief election commissioner and the caretaker governments as well as the alleged printing of hundreds of thousands of fake ballot papers by some ECP officials. These are extremely serious allegations and should be investigated at the highest level.

A commission of inquiry consisting of Supreme Court judges should be constituted without any further delay. The key investigation has to be whether there was centrally planned rigging in the 2013 elections to change the outcome on such a scale as to steal a party’s mandate and benefit the other.

I am one of those who believe that while there were numerous cases of incompetence, irregularities, mismanagement and local influence used to commit rigging, there is no evidence of systematic planned rigging. Seven out of 10 past elections had a very high incidence of pre-poll rigging because of evidence of organised systematic rigging on a national scale, such as in 2002 and 2008. We declared the 2013 elections as one of the best in Pakistani history because we did not see any evidence of this national level rigging.

As a nation, we must ensure that the truth in this matter is established beyond any doubt. If the allegations prove correct, the people responsible should be meted out exemplary punishment, as it would be no less than treason on their part. If the allegations are not proven, there should be action against those who brought these allegations and made the entire democratic system and its institutions suspect.

The writer is the president of Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development And Transparency (Pildat).

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2014