Local govt vote: Delaying tactics will not be tolerated, says CEC

Asks provinces to follow ECP’s directives on LG polls

ISLAMABAD:

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice (retd) Sardar Raza on Tuesday called upon the provinces to take the electoral body seriously and reminded them to follow its directives on holding local government (LG) polls.

Justice Raza was chairing his maiden meeting of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

“We will not tolerate such delaying tactics any more. The ECP has powers of a court and we will exercise these powers,” sources quoted the CEC as telling the representatives of Punjab, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).



“Under the Constitution, the ECP is empowered to issue directions to every institution and all of them are bound to follow commission’s orders,” Sardar Raza remarked referring to constitutional provisions which empower the ECP to exercise the powers of a high court.

There was no significant development on part of any of the three provinces those are yet to hold LG polls. The elections in these three provinces are due since 2009.

The provincial governments have been resorting to delaying tactics on one pretext or the other despite lapse of several deadlines given by the Supreme Court (SC).

The ECP had been asking Punjab government to hand over the record of delimitations it had carried out last year. High courts in Punjab and Sindh had nullified the marking of boundaries of the local councils by the provincial governments after opposition parties complained about anomalies.

The courts asked the provincial governments in these provinces to amend the law to empower ECP to conduct fresh delimitations. The provincial government on insistence of the SC made amendment in the law, however, they did not hand over the records to the ECP.

Acting secretary of ECP Usman Ali told reporters that Punjab has provided the commission its delimitation record for 37 districts so far. It is yet to provide the record for another four districts. Similarly, Sindh is yet to amend the relevant provision of its local government law regarding panel of candidates.

Besides the scrapping of the delimitations conducted by Sindh government, it nullified some provisions of law including the one under which the candidates of LG polls were to contest elections in a penal. The Sindh representative told the meeting that a committee was working to draft the amended law.

The K-P government is still double-minded on the issue of using biometric machines for voter verification in its LG polls.

Boalochistan is the only province of the country that went for LG polls so far since the last local government system expired in 2009. LG representatives in Balochistan though elected in December last year are yet to start functioning due to litigations on reserved seats.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 31^st, 2014.