A parliamentary panel on Friday asked the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to convince the Supreme Court to delay local government polls further and adopt the biometric system in all provinces.
The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs also asked the ECP to hold uniform elections in all four provinces.
The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) MNA Mian Tariq Mahmood said it was better to hold a “consensus-based election rather than a controversy-marred poll”. Other members of committee also seconded him and said they did not want to leave the field open for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan’s to repeat his rigging allegation in any future election.
ECP officials say it is easy to hold uniform elections but point out that the commission could not force the provinces in this regard, owing to clauses of the 18th Amendment that back provincial empowerment.
Pakistan Peoples Party’s lawmaker Nafisa Shah said that the principle of local governments should remain the same for each province. “Our country is facing challenges and we cannot afford any message which could go against national unity,” she said.
Earlier, the ECP told the committee that the LG polls in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) would be further delayed if the PTI led K-P government stuck to its demand for use of biometric system for voters’ identification.
According to the ECP, the K-P government wrote a letter to the commission on October 22 and asked it to hold the LG elections in the province in three phases by applying the biometric system for voters’ identification for ‘ensuring free, fair and transparent election process’.
The ECP said if the K-P’s fresh legislation was followed then the LG polls in the province could not be held till August or September of 2015. “The apex court has asked us to hold elections and we cannot further delay the process,” an ECP official told the committee.
Officials of the commission said the K-P government on March 10, 2014 published rules and notification for delimitation of village/neighbourhood councils, territorial wards of tehsil and district councils.
However, they said, the ECP noticed anomalies in the rules as well as in the delimitation. These anomalies were conveyed on March 18 to the K-P government, which was asked to issue an amendment notification but the same was not issued by the provincial government so a far, they said.
During the meeting, MNA Syed Essa Nori said the ECP failed to hold the LG polls in a transparent manner in Balochistan. He said voting was not carried out at all in some parts of the province.
“What kind of elections were they because even after one year, the mayor of Quetta city cannot be appointed?” Nori asked. The committee asked the ECP to investigate into the matter – particularly in Turbat area where the LG polls were not held.
The ECP also briefed the parliamentarians that so far Islamabad could not finalise the legislation process for the LG elections, while the matter of cantonments areas was sub judice.
‘Polls cannot be put on hold for biometrics’
Acting Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali on Friday observed that the biometric machine is something secondary and the LG polls cannot be put on hold for them.
Chairing a meeting of the ECP to consider matters related to LG polls in the K-P, he cited the example of the census that was due in 2008 and said the general polls had not been delayed.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 8th, 2014.
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