PPP once again emphatically rejects EVMs

Islamabad: “The Prime Minister’s obsession with the electronic voting machines betrays a lack of understanding of the issues at best and a plan for manipulating next elections through technology so as to undo the 18th Constitutional amendment through a selected Parliament at worst”.
This has been stated by PPPP Secretary General Farhatullah Babar in a statement today in response to the launch of a campaign at public expense in support of the EVMs.

When simpler technological innovation like Result Transmission System (RTS) in the 2018 elections is hijacked and even balloting for plots fails to arouse credibility, who will trust EVM technology in determining issues in transfer of power to the people, he asked?

He said that real issues in electoral fraud were far too complex for the EVMs to address.

EVMs can neither check booths capturing nor put to an end the mysterious midnight phone calls from ‘NO Caller ID’.

EVMs also cannot end summoning winning candidates to offices and asked to change loyalties nor can it stop manipulations to disqualify Party leaders from leadership and throw people out even from even electoral contests.

About e-voting by expats he recalled that in 2012 NADRA had explored the proposition and was found that balloting will have to be held in embassies after electronic thumb verification by the embassy officials and concluded that it was problematic. Credible reasons have not been spelt out as to how e-voting by expats without the involvement of Pak embassies abroad has become feasible now.

The real issue is the stealing of peoples mandate by newer and newer ways which came into sharp focus during the previous elections.

People’ mandate has been stolen by making and breaking political parties, by arm twisting to switch political loyalties and by propping up overnight mysterious militant groups to cut into the vote bank of mainstream political parties. Weak administrations in the driving seat face manipulations to toe the line or face destabilization by ideologues as in Faizabad dharna in 2017.

Not the EVMs but the manipulated power transfer must be central to any discussion about putting the house in order.

Electronic voting will render several sections of the Election Act including 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89 and 90 redundant and required to be amended by amending the rules. It amounts to making legislation contingent upon the dictates of an untested technology and bypass the Parliament in law making, he said.