CEC breaking the law twice over

The EC is apparently showing no concern about the accuracy and credibility of the voter list -- an issue that has already turned highly controversial, thanks to the CEC's decision to prepare it unilaterally in violation of court orders in the first place. But then the EC had decided in its August 6 meeting last year to follow the rules set for preparing the list under the Electoral Ordinance 1982, which clearly required of the EC officials to go from door-to-door for voter enlistment. There is absolutely no room for any ambiguity or any other interpretation of the rules. The trouble with preparing it sitting at the EC office is that a huge number of voters will be left out. It is not clear why the EC is again trying to do something that amounts to breaking the law. Why must it change the age-old modus operandi of preparing the voter list?

Our stand on the issue, after so much of fuss, is that the EC should be reconstituted as a whole which is possibly the only way to retrieve its lost credibility. The CEC has given a dismal account of himself and the election commissioners are not known for any better. For instance, Commissioner Zakaria was virtually not on talking terms with former CEC Abu Sayed for the last two years of his tenure as secretary to the EC. It was well known that he was taking orders from PMO rather than from the then CEC for personal and political grounds.

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Informal signals coming from government high-ups suggest that the ruling party may not be quite unwilling to consider removal of the CEC. But his replacement could be a tricky issue, given the track record of the two major parties never reaching any agreement easily. Here the two sides can make themselves understood to each other at the informal level and pave the way for finding a point of convergence in regard to suitable replacement.

Time is running out. We badly need a better understanding urgently between political parties on matters crucial to the electoral preparations in which both sides have an enormous stake.