Election Commission of Pakistan Preparing for "free, fair and transparent elections"

EC obtains 3,00,000 voting screens to ensure secrecy

ISLAMABAD, Nov 27 (APP): The Election Commission of Pakistan has almost completed foolproof arrangements for ensuring free, fair and transparent elections in the country next year, Secretary Election Commission Kanwar Muhammad Dilshad said Tuesday. Talking to ATV, he said a tough electoral contest would be held on a total of 882 seats across the country. For the first time in country's history 4,30,000 transparent ballot boxes are being imported from China. Out of which 3,50,000 has already been arrived while remaining 80,000 would be arrived on December 7 or 8.

More than 3,00,000 voting screens have also been provided to all polling stations across the country to enable voters to cost their votes in a completely secure and private environment, he said.

International standard training programme of 75,000 presiding officers and 550,000 polling personnel would be completed in second week of December in cooperation with UNDP, he said.

Election Commission will welcome and provide maximum facilities to international observers.

The experts of International Foundation for Electoral System (IFES) having offices in 138 countries working on electoral system have come into country for monitoring the election preparations, he said.

In a bid to educate polling agents of various political parties around 5 million booklets containing election rules and regulations has been published by the election commission of Pakistan, he added.

There will be 250 polling stations in each constituency. It has been decided to announce results at each polling station. Copy of results will duly given to  all the concerned candidates. Besides one copy of results would also be inscribed at main gate of each station.

A comprehensive media campaign aiming to educate the masses about procedure of vote costing would also be launched in the first week of December. The services of around 100 NGOs have also been hired to motivate people especially women to take part in the electoral process,he added.

He said the code of ethics has been devised in consultation with the all political parties.

Responding to a question he said the lists of candidates who filed nomination papers till last day would be posted on website of the election commission on Wednesday.

 
 

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