The Sindh cabinet on Friday approved the postponement of local bodies' elections in Karachi for 90 days and also informed the provincial office of the Election Commission of Pakistan about the decision through a letter.
Major opposition parties in Karachi, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and Jamaat-e-Islami took a strong exception to the delay in local government elections and said that ruling PPP and MQM-P were afraid of holding polls.
The Sindh government has delayed the local government elections for the third time on account of shortage of police personnel for security duties.
Sindh Local Government Department in its letter to the Election Commission of Sindh informed about the amendment in Clause 34 of the Sindh Local Government Act, 2013 and said that the Cabinet has approved the postponement of the local government elections in Karachi for three months.
It should be noted that the Election Commission of Pakistan has called a meeting for the second phase of local elections in Sindh on November 15, in which representatives of political parties and Sindh government will present their position.
Prior to this, local body elections have been postponed three times at the request of the Sindh government. The Sindh government said that after the flood situation, the police are engaged in rehabilitation activities therefore personnel were unavailable for security of local government elections.
LG candidates exhausted
Sindh government has made a joke out of LG polls by delaying the elections over and over again exhausting the candidates who are now tired of now-start-now-stop election campaigns, said PTI Member of Sindh Assembly Firdous Shamim Naqvi.
The local government system in Sindh was deplorable because the provincial election commission was totally governed by the Pakistan Peoples Party, said PTI central leader addressing a press conference at the Insaf House on Friday. PTI Karachi President Bilal Ghaffar was also with him at the conference.
Naqvi alleged that ECP office in Sindh was not able to take decision on its own but followed the orders of PPP to postpone the LG polls three times. He further said that now the local government candidates and the voters do not believe in the election dates announced by ECP.
Bilal Ghaffar said that the PTI's Haqeeqi Azadi march has entered its decisive phase. "We held peaceful protests in Karachi and now entering the second phase of the protests today," he said, adding that PTI Karachi is setting up town-level camps in Karachi where people will sign petition for four demands. The first demand is for an investigation in Arshad Sharif's murder case and punishment to the culprits. The second demand is for justice in Azam Swati's case. The third is registration of case against people nominated in the assassination attempt on Imran Khan. The fourth demand is investigation into the American cipher case, the PTI Karachi cheif said.
PPP shy of polls
JI Karachi chief Engr Hafiz Naeemur Rehman said they will not accept any further delay and condemned the ruling regime in Sindh for what he called illegal, unconstitutional, undemocratic and anti-people conduct by the PPP.
He expressed these views while addressing an emergent press conference held at Idara Noor-e-Haq, the JI Karachi headquarters, here on Friday night.
Speaking on the occasion, he said that the provincial government in Sindh has breached all the limits of stubbornness. He further said that instead of realizing its worst failures, the PPP government in Sindh was resorted to dictatorial tactics and was delaying the local government polls again and again.
On the occasion, he announced that the JI would not let the PPP government in the province escape the local bodies polls.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 12th, 2022.
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