Deadlock persists over constitutional amendment

ECP and statistics division brief MPs; meeting to reconvene today

ISLAMABAD: Deadlock over developing a consensus on the delimitation of constituencies persisted on Tuesday as no major breakthrough could be achieved during the parliamentary leaders meeting which was especially convened to forge consensus on the delimitation of constituencies in the backdrop of the new census.

A failure to pass a constitutional amendment before the November 10 deadline set by the Election Commission of Pakistan may lead to a delay in the next general elections.

National Assembly (NA) Speaker Ayaz Sadiq chaired Tuesday session of parliamentary parties over the issue of delimitation of constituencies. The meeting was held in a committee room in the building of the Parliament House.

During the meeting, Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and Statistics Division officials briefed the lawmakers. Later, the session was concluded with plans to reconvene meeting today (Wednesday).

After the meeting the NA speaker while briefing the media persons said that efforts were made to resolve the reservations of parties over the matter of delimitation.

“All parties agree on holding election timely,” the speaker said and added that the parliamentary leaders will now discuss the issue with their party leadership. He said another meeting of the parliamentary leaders would be held today (Wednesday) at 11 am.

Last week, the parties had agreed on keeping the total number of NA seats the same and changing the quota of the provinces in light of the provisional census results.

However, later on when it was time to pass the constitutional amendment in the National Assembly major political parties, including the PPP and MQM-Pakistan, backed out. The constitutional amendment was brought to give legal cover to the provisional results of census for doing limitation and requires a two-thirds majority, quite a challenge given how the government in the previous session struggled to meet numbers even to meet quorum.

Meanwhile, the opposition strongly criticised the government for the abrupt prorogation of the session of the lower house of parliament and alleged that the government did so to avoid facing embarrassment over the bill barring disqualified person to head the party. The bill has already been passed by the Senate last month.

PTI’s Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the media persons after attending the meeting that the opposition bill aiming to bar disqualified person from heading a political party was supposed to be tabled in the assembly today (Tuesday) and the session was prorogued to avoid this bill.

“There exists a group in PML-N which doesn’t agree with the viewpoint to appoint a disqualified person as the head of the party. The government has cracks amongst its own rank and file. The president on the summary of the government prorogued the session,” Qureshi said.

The PTI leader said when the bill pertaining to the delimitation was tabled in the National Assembly the government’s presence in the House was hardly 10 per cent. “We may contribute our share in the constitutional amendment but this is the government which can’t even meet quorum,” he deplored.

MQM leader Dr Farooq Sattar told the media persons that his party has not acknowledged the census’s results then how can it recognise the provisional results of the census. He claimed that the Afghan refugees were also registered in the census but they can’t cast votes. He said delimitation should be made on the basis of number of voters instead of the population. He said his party may agree to support the constitutional amendment provided its reservations are addressed accordingly. He also held the PPP and PML-N responsible if elections were not held on time as he said, “Both these parties did not opt to conduct census which was due in 2008.”

However, PPP’s Naveed Qamar said no permission was sought for delimitation from the Council of Common Interest (CCI).

The Awami Muslim League chief Sheikh Rashid said he was informed by the officials of the ECP that so far the census’ results of only 30 districts have been finalised while the final result of 100 more districts are yet to be completed. The AML chief also claimed that a large number of PML-N MNAs belonging to Punjab are not ready to cast their vote in favour of the amendment as it will reduce seven seats on general and will affect 33 constituencies of the province.