Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said on Monday that an inquiry should be conducted to determine if the data of the Philippines elections was intentionally excluded from Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) reports. The minister said this in a tweet while tagging a tweet of President of Pakistan Arif Alvi who had said that data on history of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in Philippines elections was very important.
The president pointed out that introduction of EVMs in the Philippines resulted in increasing voter confidence, phenomenal reductions in election petitions, murders and violence.
The president said he would love to see such a change in Pakistan as well. President Arif Alvi said that in Pakistan’s case with paper ballots to support electronic count, its system was stronger than the Philippines.
As per data in the Philippines 2007 elections were held under the traditional paper voting system and results were announced after six weeks. In 2010 and 2019 elections EVMs were used and results were announced within a few hours of conclusion of voting.
The people’s trust level on the Philippines 2007 elections was only 35 per cent whereas on 2010 and 2019 elections people’s trust level increased to 75 and 89 per cent respectively.
After 2007 elections about 1000 petitions were filed to challenge the results, which fell to 49 in 2010 and only 11 after 2019 polls.
He said that during 2007 elections in the Philippines 100 presiding officers were killed due to election day violence, but in 2010 and 2019 no polling officer lost his life in violence.
