Clear instructions should be issued and enforced to ensure that nazims and other state officials do not interfere in the election process and that state assets are not used to the advantage of any (one or more) party or candidate. Any impropriety should be immediately responded to and should include a penalty for those responsible. The Code of Conduct for Political Parties and Contesting Candidates should include a requirement for election contenders not to use public resources for campaign purposes.

Consideration should be given to provision of state funding as well as indirect funding (such as free time on public television and radio) to provide a more equal playing field and to reduce dependency on wealthy contributors. Clear and transparent rules for such funding should be established and consistently applied.

Agents for contesting candidates should be trained to take a stronger oversight role. For example, agents should know how to file complaints, how to report election offences and should ensure that they obtain a copy of the polling station’s statement of the count.

There should be review and reform of the legal framework regulating media activities, particularly the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) Ordinance 2007, the so-called Voluntary Code of Conduct and the Press, Newspapers, News Agencies and Books Registration Ordinance 2007. The restrictions on media content should be reduced and clear-cut definitions should be introduced so as to avoid legal uncertainty. Other provisions, which supersede laws already existing, should be repealed.

State authorities should promote the autonomy of the media by taking effective measures to prevent intimidation, pressure or attacks against journalists. Such measures should include protection from unwarranted arrest, and prosecution of perpetrators of intimidation and attacks against journalists.

The media should cover elections and political events more generally, with professionalism and compliance with ethical standards. Sources and facts should be verified before publication and inaccuracies should be promptly corrected. Such professionalism could be increased through the development of training programmes and academic curricula.

State media should institute clear and transparent procedures to ensure its news and public affairs broadcasts during an election campaign are impartial. There should be a clearer distinction of what is to be considered the activity of officials by virtue of their position and what is election campaigning.

The Code of Conduct for Electronic Media (Election Coverage) should include less stringent provisions and should be re-drafted in consultation with election stakeholders. It should be publicly available to the media, the contestants and the general public.

Enforcement of PEMRA regulations should be undertaken in a transparent, non-discriminatory and procedurally compliant manner.

Civil society should play a more substantial role in civic and voter education, especially in rural areas and in regards to female participation. Civil society could increase awareness of the Code of Conduct with special emphasis on parts of the process that have traditionally been problematic, such as the role of nazims and local government officials.

NADRA should make special efforts to target women to register for a CNIC, since these are essential in order to vote, as well as for many other matters. Photographs should be included on all CNICs as an anti-fraud measure.

A civic education campaign should be undertaken targeting both women and men to explain why it is valuable for women to have an ID card, to register to vote and to go and vote. Civil society, the ECP, the Ministry of Women’s Development (MoWD) and the political parties all have a role to play in this.

Strong action should be taken by the ECP and state authorities against agreements that prohibit women from voting. ROPA should be amended to provide for tribunals to disqualify a returned candidate if there is evidence that the candidate or their election agent or any other person with their connivance participated in an agreement banning women from voting or standing as candidates.

Consideration should be given to changing the system for allocating reserved seats so that the women are directly elected (by both men and women) and have a constituency to respond to.206 Increasing the proportion of reserved seats to 33%, as in the local bodies, would increase women’s chances of achieving a critical mass of women able to work on women’s issues. Consideration could also be given to including a certain number of women in the committees in the Assemblies.

The ECP should adopt a gender policy and a senior person responsible for its implementation, with the aim of increasing women’s participation in electoral processes and at all levels within the election administration.

The ECP should maintain a gender-disaggregated database of election-related information. Such a database should include data on:
(i) The number and proportion of female registered voters by constituency, and a constituency level comparison with their share of the population.
(ii) Women’s turnout by constituency.
(iii) The number and proportion of women candidates for general seats, by party affiliation/independent.
(iv) The gender breakdown of the ECP’s own staff.

Efforts should be made to increase the number of people from religious minorities on the electoral roll and who turns out to vote, through civic education and awareness campaigns.

Pakistan should consider further demonstrating its commitment to human rights by acceding to the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The EU EOM is seriously concerned about the high murder toll of candidates and persons linked to the political process during the pre-campaign and electoral campaign in 2007. The Mission considers that the motivations behind these crimes must be clarified in a timely manner and that those responsible should be arrested and brought to trial. To this end, and looking forward, towards future electoral processes, the creation of a special police task force with sufficient material and human resources to guarantee a prompt and effective investigation into such events, would be highly recommendable. It would be equally advisable for the Ministerio Público to assign specialised units for the persecution of crimes that may be in any way whatsoever linked to the electoral process.

The TSE’s Electoral Audit Office should be provided with adequate financial, organisational, and human resources for it to be able to effectively control and audit political organisations’ campaign spending and income, as well as the sources of their income, according to the recent legal and regulatory demands.

An increase and improvement in the level of communications between the TSE’s permanent structures and the various temporary electoral boards would be highly desirable, as would any effort to clarify the respective scope of each of these bodies’ autonomy and functional framework, in order to homogenise electoral procedures throughout the entire national territory.

The TSE must continue to carry out the necessary purges in the voter register to eliminate any remaining errors, and improve its overall quality. Furthermore, it would be advisable to extend the deadlines for the suspension of inscriptions into the voter register, and in this manner gain more time to purge the register (a three to four month extension in the cut-off date would be reasonable).

The electoral law should clarify the scope of the publication of the voter register, as well as guaranteeing transparency regarding its costs and clearly establishing who can access it, and in what conditions. The voter register, must in practice, be a public document, which should be available for consultation to all political organisations, without prejudicing the protection of data, which may affect the intimacy of registered citizens, as well as the obligation of political parties to guarantee that they will make an appropriate use of this document.

The requirements for the legal acquisition of electoral residence must be broadened to favour greater control, prevent fraud and as a result strengthen the level of public trust in the electoral process, especially at the municipal level. A reasonable proposal could be to demand a specific minimum residence period of a year (as opposed to the current six months), corroborated by at least two witnesses.

The EU EOM considers that it is necessary to extend the legal requirements demanded for the registration of candidates before the TSE, specifically in accordance with the demand, as included in the LEPP itself, to present the Constancia de Solvencia o Finiquito. The Electoral Law should detail the established timeframes and deadlines, as well as the sanctions that may derive from any non-compliance as well as the bodies that are responsible for auditing this compliance.