ISLAMABAD: With less than ten days to go before the first phase of local government elections begins in Sindh and Punjab, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has imposed new restrictions on one of the largest election observer groups in the country.

This is the first time ECP has imposed restrictions on any election observer group.

In a letter to the Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) – a coalition of 30 NGOs that observe elections – ECP has asked that all volunteers to obtain security clearance from police and the relevant security agencies.

In unprecedented move, commission asks all observers to obtain security clearance 10 days before polls

The ECP letter acknowledges that Fafen first wrote to the commission on Sept 15, 2015, but the requirement to obtain security clearance was forwarded to Fafen on Oct 21, well over a month later.

The letter is seen by Fafen as a move to further delay the process, since government employees and those working in private organisations will not be at work before Monday given the upcoming three-day holiday.

In response to the ECP directive, Fafen said this was the first time the commission had asked them to seek security clearance for their more than 3,000 observers, which was not only impossible to do in such limited time, but also unprecedented.

“These requirements were not part of the codal formalities for accreditation as observers,” said Mudassar Rizvi, Fafen’s head of programmes. “This restriction was not even there during the recently-held NA-122 by-elections.”

Fafen, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and the European Union’s Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM) are the main election observers in the country.

The primary concern with any election observer is that they should not be an activist or allied to any political group or candidate.

“There has not been a single complaint against Fafen because we maintain high standards of transparency and provide legal undertakings from the observers to ECP,” Mr Rizvi said.

Highlighting procedures related to election observers, he said that a list had been provided to the ECP secretary, which was usually forwarded to the relevant district returning officers (DROs), who would summon the observers in person and even float a general query seeking objections from all candidates in the constituency.

“There was one objection raised by a candidate in GBLA-2, which is the constituency of the incumbent Gilgit-Baltistan chief minister, so we abandoned the observer mission in that constituency and reflected this our report,” Mr Rizvi said.

However, Fafen was at odds with the ECP soon after the 2013 general elections, when police in Lahore registered nearly a dozen FIRs against the network for misreporting results. A similar situation also arose in Rahim Yar Khan, where the network was booked for propagating inaccurate information. But during the subsequent investigation, the case fell apart.

The first phase of local government polls in Sindh and Punjab is scheduled to be held on October 31, 2015, elections will be held in 12 districts of Punjab and eight districts of Sindh

The eight districts of Sindh include Sukkur, Khairpur, Ghotki, Larkana, Shikarpur, Jacobabad, Kashmore and Qamber, while the 12 districts of Punjab include Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujrat, Chakwal, Bhakkar, Nankana Sahib, Kasur, Pakpattan, Okara, Lodhran, Vehari and Bahwalnagar.

An ECP spokesperson could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2015

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