ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has drawn up a second five-year plan (2014-2018), with complete autonomy as one of the 13 objectives to achieve.
According to the plan, the ECP will continue its efforts to achieve complete autonomy, including financial autonomy, and creation of new positions, strengthening budgeting and procurement procedures for maximum transparency.
The ECP will undertake an assessment of the level of autonomy in line with its constitutional role to organise and conduct free and fair elections and identify areas for improvement by July 2015. It has set December 2016 as the target date for improving areas related to financial autonomy on the basis of findings of an assessment report.
Another goal the commission has set for itself is to improve the ECP’s nationwide infrastructure in line with its constitutional position and important functions it performs in the democratic system.
For this purpose it has planned to acquire land in all districts for construction of its offices and warehouses.
Strengthening IT infrastructure and extending a secure internal network access to provincial, divisional and district offices is also part of the plan.
Another important goal is to ensure that laws and rules related to electoral processes address issues it faced in the previous elections, and reforms are introduced to further strengthen the electoral system.
It will prepare a paper on the issues related to the legal framework in the light of lessons learnt from the 2013 general election, by June this year and review amendments to the Representation of People’s Act, 1976, sent to the government prior to the 2013 elections, by March 2015.
It also plans to unify the election laws by improving the earlier draft by September 2015.
Analysis of new local government laws and rules adopted by provincial governments and drafting recommendations is also among the defined objectives.
The commission will devise legal provisions to prevent anyone from barring female voters from exercising their right to franchise, review the Political Parties Order 2002, define uniform rules for political parties, their registration, intra-party elections and allocation of symbols, by March next year.
It will also devise a complete scrutiny process covering each point in the nomination form in the light of Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution.
The commission has set the deadline of March 2015 for this purpose.
Yet another goal is to undertake an in-depth analysis of the current system dealing with political finance and strengthen it by removing any gaps and building the ECP’s internal capacity.
Another important goal is to analyse the present system of resolving election complaints and disputes in various phases of electoral processes, and come up with practical measures to remove any anomalies.