Civil Society Organisations have demanded of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to prepare error-free electoral lists to ensure free, fair and transparent elections.
These organisations also expressed their reservations on the Supreme Court judgement to enlist those who do not have Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) fearing it would encourage fake registration of voters.
At a press conference here on Thursday, Sarwar Bari, Secretary General of Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen), an alliance of 30 major NGOs said that almost 5.3 million households remained unregistered in the computerised draft electoral rolls prepared by the ECP.
Fafen also released a report on "Draft Electoral Roll 2007: Flawed but Fixable." He said that the apex court has instructed the ECP to ensure that all eligible voters are registered within only 30 days . Fafen is concerned about the methodology adopted by the ECP in response to the Court order which would increase the number of registered voters, but may erode the quality of new electoral rolls on which, almost a billion rupees have already been spent.
He said that Fafen previously has made recommendations to "fix" the 2007 electoral rolls by reconciling it with the existing Nadra database, which would be the fastest, least expensive, and most efficient way to add the most names to the list.
However, he said, following instructions from the Supreme Court, ECP is now comparing the 2002 electoral rolls with the 2007 rolls. Fafen has concerns about the authenticity of the 2002 list; and has reservations about the ability of the ECP to correctly verify the names on that list for adding eligible missing voters to the draft computerised rolls.
According to him, Fafen conducted a List-to-People and People-to-List audit in electoral areas covered by 506 randomly selected Display Centres in 102 districts throughout the country. Unlike previous voters' lists, including the one used in 2002, the 2007 draft electoral rolls contains very few errors of names, addresses and national identity card numbers.
However, he said, millions of voters and households are not registered on the new list, leading to suspicions among political parties. According to findings of Fafen's report, almost 27 percent of households were found to be not registered on the draft electoral roll. In addition to missing households, unregistered males and females are scattered all over the country as part of households that have some members registered on the electoral rolls.
The number of women not registered on the draft electoral roll is much higher than the number of unregistered men throughout the country. Additionally, 3,226 DCIOs and 25,434 people visiting the Centres were interviewed, and Fafen studied the activities of political parties and NGOs at 5,558 locations.
Fafen's report notes with concern the performance of the DCIOs as a result of lack of training by the ECP. It points out procedural issues that hampered the registration of voters during the display period, such as the lack of necessary materials at centres and the fact that most centres were only open for a few hours each day.
Fafen's audit of the new electoral roll demonstrates that the resulting new electoral roll is incomplete but accurate, and Fafen believes that the improvement in terms of its accuracy, should not be compromised by adding unverified names from the 2002 list.
ECP and Nadra can still reconcile their databases so that all individuals currently holding CNICs in areas where elections will be held are automatically added to the 2007 electoral rolls. Nadra had issued about 56 million CNICs by March 2007, but only 39-40 million of these individuals are listed on the draft electoral rolls and reconciling the Nadra and ECP databases would add approximately 16-17 million voters to the 55 million currently listed, resulting in a voters' list with approximately 71-72 million names.
Nadra should produce and distribute as many CNICs as possible besides co-operating with ECP and neutral volunteers to distribute the CNICs in a timely manner so that registered voters could vote on election day.
In addition, special attention should be given to increasing registration of eligible women voters nation-wide, as instructed by the Supreme Court. The ECP must improve its co-ordination with its district offices and its operational planning to ensure timely flow of instructions and materials through the various tiers of the election administration.