Technology helps Pakistan to 'fairest' polls

May 15, 2013 22:45

It was targeted by the Taliban, women and minorities were vastly under-represented, and videos of irregularities went viral online -- yet Pakistan's 2013 election may still have been its fairest ever.

A much improved voter roll, near-record turnout, and vigilant citizens tweeting alleged rigging all played their part in what former Norwegian PM and election observer Kjell Magne Bondevik called "a credible expression of the will of the people".

Violence in the run-up to polls and on election day itself killed more than 150 people, according to an AFP tally, as the Taliban set their sights in particular on secular parties that made up the outgoing government.

But despite the threat, nearly 60 per cent of the country's registered 86 million voters went to the polls, moving Pakistani columnist Murtaza Haider to hail his country as "the world's bravest democracy".

"The results of May 11 elections prove once again that if given the opportunity, Pakistani masses would embrace democracy against the religious orthodoxy," he wrote in Dawn, one of the country's leading English language newspapers.

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