Amid the delay in announcing the general election result, Pakistan’s election commission’s new app – supposed to help officials quickly tabulate and transmit election results – faced significant challenges on Friday, reported news agency PTI.
According to details, shared by The Dawn, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) prepared the Election Management System (EMS) app for transmission of results from each polling station to a centralized system where the Returning Offices would complete the tabulation of all results.
However, Presiding Officers at several polling stations on Thursday evening found themselves unable to transmit the final results of their respective stations using the much-touted and homegrown system, the Dawn Newspaper reported, adding, an absence of connectivity.
Due to this, there has been an unusual delay in declaring the election results to the National Assembly and four provincial assemblies.
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Earlier in 2018, the ECP’s Result Transmission System (RTS) was clogged when thousands of polling stations began sending results from all parts of the country. This caused delays in the announcement of the results of some constituencies.
With situations going out of hand, the ECP official said that the presiding officers would now ‘physically’ send the results of their polling stations to the offices of their respective returning officers. This would be transmitted via the system ‘once internet service is restored’, the report said.
It was expected that CEC would address a press conference, however, Special Secretary Zafar Iqbal appeared on state-run PTV just before 3 am on Friday to announce the first official results from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly.
He blamed the suspension of internet and mobile phone services for the delay in the compilation and announcement of results.
EMS faults:
Meanwhile, ECP had claimed that the countrywide test run of EMS had been a “success”. But two election officials in Sindh province had pointed out faults in the EMS after the second test run earlier this month.
Abdul Qadir Mashori, the Qambar assistant commissioner (AC) and Returning Officer (RO) for National Assembly seat NA-197 (Qambar-Shahdadkot-II); and Usman Khaskheli, the Bakrani AC and RO for PS-12 (Larkana-III) seat of Sindh Assembly, had written to their superiors, conveying almost identical issues regarding the EMS.
Mashori has even expressed apprehension that either the system was an ‘utter failure’ or was being ‘controlled’ by someone, while Khaskheli wrote a similar letter addressed to the Larkana district returning officer (DRO).
With agency inputs.
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