Pakistani Church: "active participation" in the voting on Monday
Islamabad (AsiaNews) - Lack of security, political discontent, and low expectations for transparent voting will not keep Christians in Pakistan from going to the ballot boxes next February 18 for the general and provincial elections. "Christians should actively participate in the February 18 elections”, Peter Jacob, executive secretary of Catholic Church’s National Commission for Justice and Peace, tells AsiaNews. "We have to strengthen the democratic system of the country because the powers of extremism really want to damage this, and to defeat extremists we have to take the risk to come out of our homes and cast our vote". "People do understand that their vote can play important role to reform the system", he continues. "Some people are of the view to boycott the Monday elections but we are in favour of participating and urge the people to participate and utilise the power of the vote". According to Fr Bonnie Mendes, a Catholic priest and the director of the Human Development Centre, "as for as our voting right concern, we have moved ahead from the past, with restoration of joint electorate (editor's note: unlike the system used until recently, with separate lists for minorities) but we are still not satisfied by president Musharraf’s mode of representation at upper and lower houses of the parliament. Christians have to do a lot of work to strengthen the joint electorate". Jacob highlights as a positive development the recent involvement of the religious minorities in the movement for civil rights that is fighting for the independence of the judicial system, the rule of law, and freedom of expression. The secretary of the NCJP, finally, expresses satisfaction with the candidacy of 13 non-Muslims in the general elections for non-reserved parliamentary seats.
Election numbers
The electoral campaigns end officially at midnight tonight. On Monday, Pakistanis will vote for the lower chamber of the national assembly, and for the assemblies of the four provinces (Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, and the North West Frontier Province). There are 39 non-Muslims running for the 10 reserved seats in the national assembly, while 104 are candidates for the 23 reserved seats at the provincial level. There are 64,176 electoral seats in the entire country. The interior ministry has declared 8,928 of these as "highly sensitive", 19,380 as "sensitive", and 35,868 as "normal". Yesterday the mobilisation was completed of 81,000 armed forces troops that will guarantee, together with the provincial police agents, the peaceful unfolding of the elections. According to figures from the interior ministry, almost a thousand international observers and journalists and about 20,000 local observers will follow the election results. But the authorities have banned the media and international observers from entering the "highly sensitive" districts during the voting. At the same time, the ministry of information has clarified that reporters and observers can visit the "sensitive" zones, but at their own risk.
All of the most significant religious minorities will participate in the elections, except for the Ahmadi. They will boycott the voting as a sign of protest against the presence of an indication of "religion" on the electoral ballots, and separate lists for their community.
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