ISLAMABAD - Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the major opposition party in the Senate, Tuesday rejected recently promulgated Elections (Second Amendment) Ordinance, 2021 saying the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) did not consult major stakeholders before introducing this proposed law.

Last week, President Dr Arif Alvi had promulgated the ordinance that authorises and binds the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to procure electronic voting machines (EVMs) and to enable the overseas Pakistanis to exercise their right to vote while staying in their resident countries in the next general elections.

Former chairman Senate and PPP Senator Mian Raza Rabbani in a statement said that the ordinance deals with two very sensitive elements of the electoral process, electronic voting and voting rights to overseas Pakistanis. “But the major stakeholders including the political parties and the ECP have neither been consulted nor a consensus was developed (by the government).”

This amounts to imposing the will of one political party, he also said while referring to PTI. He said that promulgating an ordinance and then not laying it for discussion in the Parliament amounted to ridiculing and demeaning the two houses.

The president by promulgating the ordinance has become a party to furtherance of the political agenda of a particular political party of which he is a member, therefore, he has brought into question the neutrality of his constitutional office, Senator Rabbani also said.

“The electronic voting machines experience is fraught with many dangers and rigging without leaving a trail, despite a paper print out of the vote. Many technically advanced countries have withdrawn this system.”

Senator Rabbani said the vote for overseas Pakistanis has been tried on limited bases by the ECP but failed. “This raises serious issues in a constituency-based electoral system as to the manner and mode of the disbursement of votes by the ECP to the voters, casting of votes in that constituency and then counting of the votes.” He said that both these amendments meant that elections cannot be held and completed on the same day and the results will be compiled over days.

“Such a system is a recipe for engineered elections,” he said adding the election laws in Pakistan were good only if the state allowed them to be implemented.