A week on: Courtesy calls hold up poll commission meeting

Over 100 important files are pending at the office of new CEC which need his formal nod

ISLAMABAD: In his first week in office, the new Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice (retd) Sardar Raza remained busy in accepting courtesy calls from opposition parties, especially the ones who had shown no trust in the other four members of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

The CEC’s appointment was made last week after a delay of over 16-months. During the long delay, the top electoral body worked on an ad-hoc basis, and many important tasks kept piling up, including key appointments in the top bureaucracy of the ECP.

The first formal engagement of the new CEC was his meeting with a delegation of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). This was followed by his meetings with a delegation of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and a meeting with the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) delegate.

ECP sources said the new CEC has not held any formal meeting with ECP staff or members of the commission so far.



Without taking the four members into confidence, these courtesy calls with opposition parties were accepted by the CEC.

“Some of these parties not only expressed their reservations on the integrity of the members but also demanded their removal in their meeting with CEC. They do the same on live TV cameras outside thae ECP building,” ECP officials said, referring to PTI and JI delegations.

Unless they resign themselves, the CEC and four members of the ECP are appointed for a period of five years and cannot be removed without adopting a very complicated procedure provided in the constitution.

In the existing constitutional framework adopted through the 18th amendment in 2010, the CEC is merely a figurehead and all important decisions have to be made through joint decisions among the five top officials of the commission.

One of the reasons for the abrupt resignation of Raza’s predecessor Justice (retd) Fakhruddin G Ebrahim in July last year was that he felt powerless as head of the top electoral body, when three members of the commission rejected his decision to go for a review against a decision given by the Supreme Court under the then chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

The Justice Chaudhry-led bench had advanced the date of the presidential polls by accepting the plea of the incumbent government, which the then CEC thought was based on flimsy grounds.

The opposition parties protested that they were not given a chance to present their point of view before the court. Justice Ebrahim, a top jurist himself, viewed it as an encroachment of the top court in the administrative affairs of ECP and wanted to go for a review. However, his attempt was foiled by members of the commission through a majority vote of three against the move.

On Friday, the hearing date was fixed of an important election case in which Sindh chief minister was a party against Syed Ghous Ali Shah. However, ECP sources said that due to the CEC’s scheduled meeting with the JI delegation it was postponed for Monday.

The officials said since they had no formal meeting with their new boss, they do not know the priorities of the new CEC and how he would want to run the affairs of the commission.

“Except a few bureaucrats in the commission who always try to cosy up to every new boss, there was no formal meeting in the ECP during the week,” said officials, adding that there were over 100 important files pending at the office of new CEC which need his formal nod. They implied that with certain deliberate delay tactics, things are kept pending “just on the pretext that the new CEC would need to sign summaries”, the officials said, claiming that it was not a legal requirement but bureaucratic maneuvering to continue typical red-tapeism.

The appointment of Justice Raza came at a time when the post of the ECP is seen as tainted with allegations of failure to stop rigging in last year’s general elections. His important tasks include holding of the Local Government elections in three provinces which have been lingering on since 2009 and conducting new delimitations, an exercise that has always remained contentious. He would be leading the execution of electoral reforms, now pending with the Parliament for an approval. ECP is without its top bureaucrat - the secretary - a post that actually runs the affairs of the commission.


Published in The Express Tribune, December 14^th, 2014.