Vacant Senate seat: Delay in by-poll schedule bares ECP ‘incompetence’

Upset political parties question polling body’s actions

ISLAMABAD: The country’s top poll supervisory body has yet to issue the schedule for election to a vacant seat in the upper house of parliament, prompting various political parties to cast doubts on its competency.

The parliamentary board of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is still waiting for the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to issue a relevant notification, as the candidate for the vacated Senate slot needs to be finalised.

On February 24 Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had designated Iqbal Zafar Jhagra as the new Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa governor, who took oath on March 4. Before taking oath, Jhagra had not tendered his resignation in the Senate. However, according to the Constitution, after assuming his constitutional position his previous position automatically stands vacant.

A senior PML-N senator said that although the party’s Leader of the House in Senate Raja Zafarul Haq has finalised the name of Sartaj Aziz for the vacant seat, he and the party’s parliamentary board are waiting for Nawaz’s approval.

Sources said the board is upset over the ECP’s ‘incompetence’, as the polling body has yet to issue a notification regarding the vacant seat and the schedule for election to it.

Meanwhile, a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) official said Shireen Mazari had already highlighted loopholes in ECP’s functioning last March, when she moved the Islamabad High Court challenging the nomination papers of PML-N’s Jhagra and Rahila Magsi. He said Jhagra and Magsi got their votes transferred after issuance of the election schedule.

He said that following the court order, the electoral body withheld the notification of the final victory of the two candidates for the time being. He urged the ECP to issue the notification and schedule, as his party also needs to finalise its candidate.

Clarifying the ECP’s position, its Media Deputy Director Khurshid Alam told The Express Tribune that according to the law, the polling body has 30 days to hold election for the vacant Senate seat.

Logically speaking, he said, the polling body should have issued the notification immediately after Jhagra’s vote was transferred from Islamabad to K-P. “However, the law is silent in this regard.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2016.