ISLAMABAD: Rather than trying to ensure that electoral practices across the board are free of horse-trading, the government seems to be making ‘surgical’ amendments to the Constitution that are limited in their scope only to the Senate election.

A core group of legal experts, led by Barrister Zaffarullah Khan, has come up with several draft laws that will allow the upcoming Senate elections to be conducted via open ballot.

The draft laws, copies of which are available with Dawn, show that the amendments to existing laws are specific to the Senate elections.

Take a look: Govt drafts ‘anti-horse trading’ amendment

Amendments have been proposed in the Senate (Election) Act, 1975 and may be introduced through a bill in parliament.

Under the proposed amendments, the word ‘secret’ shall be omitted from Section 23 of the Senate (Election) Act, 1975. This means that the polls will be held through open ballot. To provide further legal cover for the open balloting, the word ‘secret’ may be replaced by ‘process’ in the relevant section.

Moreover, in section 69 of the act, it has been proposed that the word “secrecy” be replaced by the phrase “process of voting”.

Currently, Section 68 punishes candidates guilty of interfering with the secrecy of votes with imprisonment, which may extend up to six months or a fine. Similarly, Section 69 punishes a returning officer or polling officer for his/her failure to maintain secrecy. With the proposed amendments in the sections, the information can now be shared with anybody by either the legislator or the returning officer.

Through another draft notification, an amendment is being proposed in Rule 16 of the Senate (Election) Rules, 1975 to the voting procedure section by replacing the word ‘booth’ with ‘place’. The amendments in the rules will be made through a presidential ordinance.

Retired Justice Tariq Mehmood told Dawn that after these proposed amendments, no-one can call this an election. “This is a selection process conducted through open ballots,” he remarked.

Instead of going through this tedious legal exercise, Mr Mehmood suggested, the PML-N and its allied parties should empower the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to select senators on the pattern of reserved seats for women.

He said with the identifiable ballot papers, this would cease to be an election. The amendments, he said, also limited the liberty of the legislator to exercise his/her vote of right and bound them to the dictates of the party head.

An ECP official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that after changing the word ‘secrecy’ to “process of voting”, the government was leaving itself room to settle the actual procedure of voting later. He said under the open ballot process, the government could opt for a show of hands, identifiable ballots or some other process, in consultation with other parties.

The secret ballot stipulation was not present in the original draft of the 1973 constitution and was introduced later by military ruler Ziaul Haq.

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2015

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