Fafen | Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Twelve years after Khyber Pakhtunkhwa became Pakistan’s first province to enact a Right to Information (RTI) law, the Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) notes the pioneering framework remains “underutilised and vulnerable to disinformation due to weak enforcement and structural gaps”. In a policy brief released Saturday titled “From Pioneer to Performer: Making Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Right to Information Act Work Against Disinformation”, Fafen urged the KP Assembly and provincial government to launch targeted legal and institutional reforms to transform KP’s pioneering right to information framework into an effective mechanism for proactive disclosure and public accountability. KP enacted the law after Article 19A on the “right to information” was added to the Constitution through the 18th Amendment in 2010. But Fafen’s assessment of 190 provincial public bodies’ websites found a stark implementation gap: on average, public bodies proactively disclosed only 57 per cent of the information the law ...

ISLAMABAD: Public bodies in Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa province proactively disclose an average of 57 per cent of the legally required information on their official websites, according to the latest transparency assessment report by the Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen). The assessment, conducted as part of Fafen’s “Countering Disinformation Thr­ou­gh Information” campaign, emphasis­­es the role of proactive disclosures in str­engthening institutional transparency and curbing misinformation. A lack of official and authentic information fuels speculation, rumours, assumptions, and conjectures, all of which become major drivers of disinformation that undermi­nes institutional credibility, erodes public trust, and contributes to instability. The assessment reviewed 190 public bodies, including 36 secretariat departments, 98 attached departments, and 56 autonomous bodies, against the proactive disclosure requirements of Section 5 of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Right to Information (KPRTI) Act, 2013. The Act explicitly m...

The Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) has observed that the November 23 by-elections were marred by “recurring violations” of campaigning restrictions and “gaps” in results transparency. The ruling PML-N secured close to 64 per cent of the total votes polled in the by-elections for six National Assembly constituencies held on Sunday as it emerged victorious on all seats. Five constituencies were located in Punjab and one in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. These seats, except for one, were vacated due to the disqualification of the opposition PTI MNAs. The PML-N also won six out of seven Punjab Assembly seats in the province by securing 82.41pc of the polled votes. On the seventh seat, it had not fielded its candidate in PP-269, Muzaffargarh, against PPP nominee Alamdar Qureshi. The elections monitor had issued its by-election observation report a day earlier. In an accompanying press release, it noted: “The November 23rd by-elections for 13 National and Punjab Assemblies constituencies, though largely well-managed, ...