Pak expat vote ‘to be ensured’

The Supreme Court of Pakistan was informed yesterday that work to include overseas Pakistanis in the forthcoming elections had been completed.
The court was informed that a recent meeting of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and relevant government functionaries discussed the issue and pledged that expats’ participation would be ensured, media reports said last night.
This was submitted to a three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Gulzar Ahmed and Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed, when it resumed hearing of constitutional petitions by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan and others.
ECP Director General Sher Afgan said that it was decided that the inclusion of overseas Pakistanis in the coming election was possible, and that initially Pakistanis residing in 10 countries would be included in the exercise.
“About 4.5 million registered voters are residing in other countries, out of which 3.5 million are in the Middle East and 2.9 million out of this figure are living in Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” he informed the court. Afgan further said in Saudi Arabia about one million Pakistanis have manual passports, thus they would not be able to take part in the elections because the Machine Readable Passport was the pre-requisite for them.
Attorney General for Pakistan Irfan Qadir told the court that the first step toward ensuring this exercise would be legislation in the law. He said after including certain clauses in the legislation, the process of giving voting rights to expatriates would become easier.
The ECP chief told the court that once the process of legislation is completed, they would need help from the Overseas Pakistanis Ministry and Foreign Office, as the process of deputing staff in the foreign mission would also take time. He added that in countries where the population of registered voters is over 100,000, two polling stations would be constituted.
Afgan said issuing visas to the staff for foreign missions would take two to three weeks.