ISLAMABAD: In what speaks volumes about the minimal influence of political parties at the grassroots level, their combined vote bank was as low as 37pc in the first phase of the local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa against the independents’ share of 63pc.

The most worrisome aspect of the conduct of the elections was the unprecedented poor quality of the preparation of election results by returning officers and the negligence of the higher authorities of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

Pattan shared these findings with mediapersons at a press conference on Friday.

Pattan is a non-governmental organisation that works to address governance and democracy deficiencies through research and awareness raising, social mobilisation and capacity building of marginalised communities.

Rejected votes higher than margin of victory in most areas of KP, says report

The organisation’s analysis was based on the examination of about 10,000 Form XXIs (final consolidated results) available on the ECP website. The forms were scrutinised in the light of the Elections Act 2017 and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Councils (conduct of elections) Rules 2021. It found six types of anomalies in more than two third of the examined forms, including discrepancies in polled votes across various categories of seats within the polling stations, incomplete results, percentage calculation errors, missing polled votes, missing candidates’ names and wrong result titles.

One of the most disturbing findings was the widespread presence of rejected votes which was higher than the margin of victory in most of the examined forms. For instance, the analysis of 1,238 forms of three districts (Nowshera, Bajaur and Swabi) showed this phenomenon at 54.5pc.

Under Section 172 of the Elections Act, tampering with ballot papers is prohibited. Equally, the law under Section 55 allows ECP to take disciplinary action and punish officials who are found involved in corrupt practices in “influencing the result of the election”. Rule 39(9) of the KP local council elections states that the voter must insert his/her ballot in the ballot box. Each voter had received six ballot papers – one for each category of seat. Under Section 84(8) of the Elections Act 2017, he/she must cast each vote in the ballot box. The data shows blatant violation of this section at more than two-third places – polling stations.

“Sadly, the ECP officials appear to have uploaded Form XXIs without conducting any scrutiny,” the report said.

The examination of election data sets also showed that political parties were suffering from severe social ‘malnutrition’. They neither have the capacity to field candidates on all categories of seats nor mobilise voters. For instance, the combined vote bank of all the contesting political parties was just 37pc of the polled votes, while independents had 67pc. JUI-F’s share was the largest (14pc), followed by ANP with 8pc, JI 5pc, PTI 4pc, and PPP and PML-N had 2pc each.

As far as share in contesting and returned candidates is concerned, there appears a strong relationship between capacity to field candidates and returned candidates. However, this trend becomes weak on the seats of mayors/chairpersons and general seats. The share of independent candidates in village/neighborhood councils (VNCs) was 68pc while combined share of all parties was just 32pc. The PTI did not field candidates in many districts. Of the total winners, the share of the independents was 61pc and combined parties had 39pc. Within political parties, JUI won 15pc, ANP 9pc, JI 5pc and PTI 4pc.

Regarding women’s participation as candidates, out of a total of 2,250 female seats, 572 (25pc) remained vacant while 26pc seats were filled without any contest.

Interestingly, religious parties fielded more women candidates than the so-called liberal parties. With some variation, most parties failed to nominate candidates on peasant/workers’ seats too.

Recommendations

Based on the analysis of 10,000 Forms (XXI), Pattan recommended that the ECP should take disciplinary action against polling staff who violated the law during their election duties, select qualified and diligent officials as returning officers, provide rigorous training to all selected officials and enhance capacity of ECP research wing and IT branch.

It said political parties should hold internal party election and ECP should monitor their polling processes.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2022