PTI to push for electoral reforms

Will move its separate bill if govt does not accept party’s proposals

ISLAMABAD: While the ruling PML-N is apprehensive about the possible fallout of the Supreme Court’s imminent verdict in the Panama Papers case, its political arch rival – Imran Khan’s PTI – has already prepared itself for the next round of confrontation with the government.

In the post-Panamagate judgment scenario, the PTI would solely be focusing on pushing the government to adopt electoral reforms, and for the purpose the party has decided to seek ‘every possible recourse inside and outside parliament’.

“Although we are convinced that the government will use every tactic to delay the process of setting in place the electoral reforms suggested by the PTI ahead of the next general elections, the reforms will remain our prime focus,” the PTI Senator Shibli Faraz told The Express Tribune.





Faraz, who is also a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms, said the PTI in coming days would pursue the issue through the committee that comprises 33 members belonging to various political parties, including the PTI.

“But if we find no significant outcome, then other options will be exercised,” he added.

In December last year, the government had come up with a 149-page draft bill on the electoral reforms – The Election Bill, 2017 – that primarily focuses on fine-tuning the existing election laws in the country.

The parliamentary committee – formed by the government after the PTI’s 2014 marathon sit-in in Islamabad – drafted the bill following deliberations that lasted more than two years.

However, the PTI is of the view that the electoral reforms the party had suggested during the course of deliberations have not been incorporated in the draft bill.

While, tabling the draft bill in the National Assembly on December 20, 2016 the government had sought proposals from the stakeholders in a bid to further improve the bill.

“The PTI has already proposed over 100 amendments to the draft bill.

“They are chiefly related to granting voting rights to overseas Pakistanis, an independent and financially and administratively autonomous Election Commission of Pakistan, electronic voting and biometric verification of voters,” said senior PTI leader Dr Arif Alvi, while talking to The Express Tribune.



Alvi accused the government of resorting to delaying tactics in implementing some prime demands of the PTI, most important among them, he said, is granting the voting right to overseas Pakistanis.

A subcommittee of the Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms – headed by Alvi – has also suggested a comprehensive mechanism for giving voting rights to overseas Pakistanis.

Alvi was of the view that the government was not giving consideration to the PTI’s proposals, adding if the situation persisted, then the party would come up with its own bill of electoral reforms and would go to every extent to push the government to adopt it.

During an informal meeting with Lahore-based journalists on Friday, the PTI chief categorically said the PTI would not enter the next general elections without the proposed electoral reforms.

“The PTI will opt for street power and block the next general elections if they are held without announcing the electoral reforms,” Imran was quoted as saying.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 26^th, 2017.