Islamabad
Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz on Monday said in the 2018 general election, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had come to power with the support and votes of the people.
Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN), a reputable independent non-governmental organization monitoring elections and other democratic processes, had acknowledged significant improvement in the quality of critical electoral processes in the 2018 general election, he said in a tweet. The minister shared FAFEN’s comparative list of irregularities observed in the 2013 and 2018 general elections, showing decline in the latter one.
As per FAFEN, some 133 petitions were filed to challenge election in the National Assembly constituencies in 2013, while their number was only 102 in 2018. The most important point is that both the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had challenged the election in 24 NA constituencies in 2018 while the PTI alone filed 23 petitions in the Election Commission of Pakistan against “unfair” polls.
According to the FAFEN data, the percentage of campaign materials’ presence inside the polling stations in 2013 was 3.2 percent, which fell to 1.8 per cent in 2018. Similarly, the percentage of voters permitted to cast votes with identification documents other than national identity cards in 2013 was 9.3 per cent against 1.1 per cent in 2018. The FAFEN data shows that in 2013 the ratio of polling staff, polling agents ,security personnel or other persons accompanying voters behind secrecy screens was 17 per cent which fell to 6.8 per cent in 2018. Likewise, the percentage of polling staff disallowing voters with disabilities from seeking assistance of their choice to cast vote fell to 3.5 per cent in 2018 from 14.9 per cent in 2013.–APP
