PPP, PTI demand polls within 90 days

PTI also announces to move SC against CCI’s approval of census

ISLAMABAD:

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) opposed on Thursday any delay in the general elections after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) decided to conduct delimitation exercise afresh.

Soon after the ECP announced the decision of fresh delimitation of the constituencies on the basis of the new digital population census results, the two major political parties stressed that the elections must be held within 90 days.

The PTI also said that it would challenge the decision of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) that called for new census-based general election, before the Supreme Court on Friday (today).

The PPP, which as a member of the former ruling alliance was part of the “unanimous” approval of the new census, has now taken the stance that redrawing boundaries of the constituencies was not a “constitutional requirement”.

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“PPP has been demanding elections to be held as per the Constitution,” PPP’s Central Information Secretary Faisal Karim Kundi said, “There is no constitutional requirement to do delimitations but there is constitutional requirement to hold elections within 90 days.”

The PPP’s elections dilemma can be gauged from the fact that initially it was convincing other parties not to delay the polls beyond October or November. PPP Senator Saleem Mandiviwala had earlier said that the elections will be held on time as the government had made international commitments.

However, following the CCI decision, PPP leader Qamar Zaman Kaira, had said that holding elections within 90 days and holding elections on the basis of fresh census followed by delimitation exercise were both constitutional requirements and by chance they both have come together.

“Now, it’s not a choice but a mandatory requirement to complete the delimitation process before holding elections,” he had said, adding that the rest was up to the ECP how it tackled the situation.

In a strong reaction to the ECP’s move for fresh delimitation, a PTI spokesperson, while terming the ECP’s delimitation schedule an anti-Constitution schedule, said that it was “based on malicious intent and a clear deviation from the Constitution”.

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On Thursday, the ECP announced to complete the process of delimitation by mid-December, suggesting that elections would not take place within the 90-day constitutional period that would end in November after the dissolution of the National Assembly on August 9.

Under the Constitution, ECP has to hold elections within the 90-day period but the announcement of conducting four-month long delimitation exercise has dampen the prospects of holding the elections this year as the ECP also needs to give a 54-days election schedule, once the delimitation process is complete.

In a statement, the PTI spokesperson rejected the ECP move of holding fresh delimitation and announced to challenge the CCI’s decision before the apex court.

The statement emphasised that in case of premature dissolution of the National Assembly, the “ECP was constitutionally bound to hold the elections within the stipulated 90 days.”

The spokesperson added that the “ECP’s schedule was a criminal attempt to prolong the tenure of the caretaker government in sheer violation of the Constitution.”

He stated that after the violation of the Supreme Court’s order on holding elections in Punjab and Pakhtunkhwa and breaching the Constitution, the ECP had once again resorted to violating the Constitution by delaying the polls.

In the light of the decision of the CCI, the PTI official said: “The redrawing of the constituencies could not be used as an excuse and justification for escaping from the elections.”

He recalled that apart from the prime minister, the four elected provincial chief ministers were part of the CCI, adding that a major irregularity was committed by making the “illegal” caretaker chief ministers of Punjab and K-P as part of the decision-making process in the meeting of the CCI.

He said that they were looking for poll escape route due to fear of their crushing defeat in the coming election because of the rising popularity of the PTI.

However, he vowed that the party would resist all such conspiracies and attempts to deprive the people of their right to vote, according to the Constitution.

Meanwhile, the former ruling party PML-N has yet to react to the ECP’s decision of redrawing the constituencies afresh. The party spokesperson was approached for comments but she didn’t respond till filing of the story.