PML-N lashes out at govt over ‘threats’ to ECP

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) was up in arms on Friday over a news conference by federal ministers Fawad Chaudhry and Azam Swati and Prime Minister’s Adviser Babar Awan, following rejection of the proposal regarding the use of electronic voting machine (EVM) by a Senate committee.

PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif, party spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb and PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz separately issued strong-worded statements, condemning, what they called, a threatening language used by government functionaries.

In a statement, Shehbaz said the government was left with the option of “hurling threats” in the meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs over the EVM issue because it had no answer to the objections raised over the technical and procedural workings of it.

The PML-N president, who is also the opposition leader in the National Assembly, said the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had raised “solid and clear” objections regarding technical and operational problems associated with the EVM.

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The ECP objections, he added, raised the issue of transparency of the future election but the government had no answer. “On Friday, the ECP representatives had to walk out [from the Senate committee meeting] over the attitude of the government representatives.”

Shehbaz said the threat by the ministers to “set institutions on fire and send them to hell” reflected “terrorism” and was highly condemnable. “This, terrorising and threatening,” he added, was the nature of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Meanwhile, responding to the ministerial news conference, PML-N Information Secretary Marriyum Aurangzeb said that the PTI attacked democracy and the Constitution by threatening, harassing, terrorising and attempting to coerce the ECP.

Marriyum said the ruling PTI had committed “the most blatant contempt” of the ECP demanded punishment for the ministers under Article 10 of the Election Act – which details the power of the election supervisor to award punishment for contempt.

The PTI threatened the election commission during the Senate committee meeting and then started onslaught against the election commission through press talks. “The PML-N will not allow [it], no matter how many threats, terrorising tactics and harassment ploys this government uses”.

Separately, taking to microblogging website Twitter, senior PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz wrote that the government was threatening with setting the ECP on fire but no one was there to question them.

“We did not criticise the institutions but only the negative characters hiding in them. But here, the government is threatening to set the whole institution on fire and there is no one to question [them],” she tweeted.