Meeting of Senate body on election deferred

Senate Standing Committee on Election scheduled to meet on Monday to evolve consensus on pending legislation for holding general elections deferred its meeting. The committee did not have the chance to look into recommendations made at the All Parties Conference (APC) and public hearing.
There are some 16 non-governmental organisations which raised certain observations on the administrative and legal part of Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) laws for general election. According to these observations, the first part of the Code is repetition of what is already in the law. By issuing a Code which repeats what is already in the law, the ECP is not making any value addition. It is just taking away the focus from the Law, which parties and candidates should study before competing in the next elections.
The second part of the Code contains some provisions which the commission wants to issue but which are useless - there are no enforcement mechanism and some provisions give the impression that the Commission is transferring the responsibility to the parties which is clearly the ECP's job (for example, voter information).
It is also trying to regulate things for which parties cannot be made accountable. This Code cannot replace concise and legally mandated administrative regulations which complement the law (i.e. electoral finances, campaigning regulations) and which have enforcement component. "It would be much better if this part would be a Voluntary Code of Conduct negotiated by political parties with strong public commitment", the observations state.
It adds, in practice, if the ECP issues this Code as it is, nobody will respect it and there will be no penalties. Instead of issuing toothless Code, the ECP should create administrative regulations and procedures for many areas, but they failed to do so. There are no regulations guiding election dispute resolution, no regulations on monitoring campaign finances, no regulations on enforcing campaign spending limits and many more.
When it comes to legislation - The Senate Special Committee organised public hearing where many concrete suggestions were made. Unfortunately, similar to the NA Committee on election reforms, the Senate Committee is also wasting time in political discussions instead of introducing amendments in the legislation.