Pakistanis abroad vote without a glitch
HOWEVER LOW TURNOUT BACK HOME — AROUND 22% IN SOME URBAN AREAS — MARKED YESTERDAY’S BY-ELECTIONS
Thousands of Pakistanis abroad voted online for the first time in the country’s history yesterday without a glitch, authorities said, as the country held by-elections for 11 national and 24 provincial assembly seats.
Voing started at 8am in Pakistan yesterday and concluded at 5pm. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had made it clear that no extra time would be given for polling.
However a low turnout at home — around 22 per cent in urban areas — marked yesterday’s by-elections.
On the other hand, overseas Pakistanis participated in the polling process enthusiastically and, according to the ECP, more than 65 per cent of 7,410 registered overseas voters cast their votes.
According to an ECP spokesperson, the number of overseas Pakistanis who had cast their vote by 3pm had crossed 4,070 and hopefully it would grow by the time election process concludes.
Out of 4,070 cast votes by expatriate Pakistanis 3,317 votes alone were polled for candidates contesting on 11 National Assembly seats, he said.
New era
This is first time that overseas Pakistanis are allowed to cast their vote in by-elections and according to former Secretary General of Free And Fair Election Network (FAFEN) and a senior analyst, Sarwar Bari, this marked the first chapter of a new era.
“In the days to come, it will gradually pick up and you may see an overwhelming number of Pakistanis living overseas will register with the ECP portal for overseas Pakistanis and cast their votes” Bari said.
Election Commission of Pakistan too took special measures to ensure smooth polling by the overseas Pakistanis.
According to the Election Commission’s director-general of information technology, Khizar Aziz, the website designed for overseas Pakistanis worked quite successfully and there were no issues faced by the voters.
“At times, due to an increase in the number of users and multiple clicks, it slowed down but there was not a single moment that it failed or hung up,” he said.
Meanwhile, the EC’s information technology team also foiled several attempts by hackers to disable or block the portal designed for overseas Pakistanis.
More than 10,000 such attempts were made at home and abroad to hack ECP website, however the information technology team was quite vigilant and thwarted all such attempts, the sources said.