General

Fawad urges opposition to cooperate with Govt to hold impartial elections

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain says the government is committed to go ahead with its electoral reforms agenda for free, fair, transparent, and credible elections through the use of modern technology.

Addressing a joint news conference, along with Minister for Science and Technology Syed Shibli Faraz, in Islamabad on Sunday, he urged the opposition to cooperate with the government to hold impartial elections in the country.

Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said the government has presented 49 reforms, but unfortunately, the opposition is neither accepting them nor coming up with its own proposals. He said the government is serious about using Electronic Voting Machine as is being practiced in various countries of the world to ensure transparency in the voting process.

The Information Minister said the Election Commission of Pakistan, in its report, omitted the data that supported the EVMs.

Speaking on the occasion, Syed Shibli Faraz said his ministry had prepared a prototype of the EVM and invited the political parties and the ECP to examine its functioning, but they did not take it seriously. He said if ECP does not trust the machine prepared by the Ministry of Science and Technology then it is free to procure such a machine from anywhere.

He said we have no priorities regarding the use of a particular machine as we only want a technology driven election to give them credence.

Source: Radio Pakistan