Ice melts in talks on ECP appointments

Govt and opposition reach agreement on Sikandar Sultan Raja as chief election commissioner

ISLAMABAD: After months of deadlock, a bipartisan parliamentary committee on appointments to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) made a breakthrough on Monday, reaching agreement on the names of the new chief election commissioner (CEC) and two members from Sindh and Balochistan.

Sikandar Sultan Raja emerged as the consensus candidate for appointment to the post of CEC, while Nisar Durrani and Shah Mehmood Jatoi, would be members of the ECP from Sindh and Balochistan, respectively, sources said after a meeting of the committee in the federal capital.

The post of CEC has remained vacant since Dec 6, 2019 when Justice (retd) Sardar Muhammad Raza retired. Two ECP members, Abdul Ghaffar Soomro of Sindh and Justice (retd) Shakeel Baloch of Balochistan also retired at the end of their terms.

The Constitution mandates that when the ECP positions fall vacant, they must be filled within 45 days by the government in consultation with the opposition, but the talks between the two sides remained deadlocked as they rejected each other’s nominations.

Around a dozen meetings of the bipartisan panel have taken place but all remained fruitless. Apparently, Monday’s meeting also ended without any result, but the sources said that the members had agreed to the new names and the formal announcement would be made on Tuesday (today).

“We held talks in a conducive environment and made good progress on the names for the CEC and ECP members,” committee member Senator Mushahidullah Khan of the PML-N told reporters after the meeting. He did not elaborate.

Raja was nominated for the CEC post by Prime Minister Imran Khan, who withdrew his previous three names to break the impasse in the committee. Three more names on the table were from Opposition Leader in National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif.



Imran floated the names of retired bureaucrats, Jameel Ahmed, Fazal Abbas Maken and Sikandar Sultan Raja, in an effort to reach elusive consensus with the opposition. The opposition had refused to support his three earlier nominations -- Babar Yaqoob Fateh, Arif Khan and Fazal Abbas Maken.

The opposition was pushing for its nominees for the CEC post, Nasir Mahmood Khosa, Jalil Abbas Jilani, and Akhlaq Ahmad Tarar – none of whom could win government’s endorsement. The PPP had proposed the name of former attorney general Irfan Qadir.

On August 22, President Arif Alvi appointed Khalid Mehmood Siddiqui as ECP member for Sindh and Munir Ahmed Kakar for Balochistan against the positions vacated by Soomro and Baloch, from the two provinces.

However, both of them were denied the oath. In November, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) suspended the notification of their appointment on a petition from PML-N MNAs Murtaza Javed Abbasi and Dr Nisar Cheema. Last week the court gave 10 days’ time to the government to finalise the appointments.

Last week, a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, chaired by Senator Pervaiz Rashid, was told that the government and the opposition had reached a consensus on the ECP appointments. Senator Dr Sikandar Mandhro, who is also a member of the parliamentary committee, said that the deadlock on the ECP appointments issue had been broken.