The government may be serious about forming a special parliamentary committee to probe election rigging allegations but most political actors, however, don’t expect anything substantive to come out of it. PHOTO: FILE
The government may be serious about forming a special parliamentary committee to probe election rigging allegations but most political actors, however, don’t expect anything substantive to come out of it.
They believe that such a body would only serve as a “catharsis” for those crying foul.
The National Assembly’s speaker has invited representatives of all political parties to discuss how the committee will be formed and what its terms of reference will be during a meeting scheduled for Monday.
“Such parliamentary body would have no legal authority. None of its decisions or recommendations would be binding on the Election Commission of Pakistan,” said a member of the National Assembly who did not want to be quoted.
The committee is also likely to run into early snags since the assembly’s sitting speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq himself has been accused of rigging by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), said a parliamentarian.
The Election Commission of Pakistan, according to him, is the appropriate platform and the only constitutionally authorised body to deal with complaints pertaining to elections.
On Thursday, the government proposed setting up a parliamentary committee to probe rigging claims in the May 11 elections after PTI chief Imran Khan wrote a letter to the government drawing its attention towards the issue.
Members of the opposition, however, feel the committee is an exercise in futility and would only waste time.
Futile exercise
“Most candidates and parties’ cases on rigging complaints were already pending with courts and the ECP. What new would the committee come up with in this situation,” said Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain in his party’s consultative meeting in Lahore on Saturday.
“Forming any such committee on rigging was, in fact, another form of rigging to conceal elections’ rigging,” said Hussain.
He said the committee has no justification in the presence of election tribunals and an independent judiciary.
Spokesperson for Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the chief of Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam-Fazl Jan Achakzai said such a committee would be useless as its decisions would not be legally binding on anyone.
“If it was for recommendations on electoral reforms, many independent bodies and foreign elections’ observers have already given many suggestions and recommendations,” said Achakzai.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 19th, 2013.
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