Another dharna: Imran sets Oct 4 ‘deadline’ for ECP members to resign

PTI chief says his party will not contest by-elections and LG polls under current ECP

LAHORE:

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan has set the October 4 deadline for the members of the top poll supervisory body to step down or else face a dharna by his party’s workers and supporters outside their office.

“PTI workers will gather outside the office of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in Islamabad when the deadline expires. I shall announce the next strategy after October 4, if the ECP members do not resign by then,” Imran said while addressing PTI workers in Lahore on Saturday.

The PTI announced that Jehangir Tareen would contest the re-election from NA-154 (Lodhran-I), while Aleem Khan would run for NA-122 (Lahore-V), the constituency where Imran had contested against recently unseated National Assembly speaker Ayaz Sadiq in the 2013 elections. “Shoaib Siddiqui will run for PP-147 (Lahore-XI).”

Imran also challenged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to run for NA-122 against him. “My party has learnt a lot from our Islamabad sit-in and we shall not allow anyone to rig the polls,” he added.



He said his party would install cameras at every polling station and would not allow anybody to cast bogus votes. “I fought my case because I want my countrymen to know that getting justice for a poor man is impossible in this country.”

Imran alleged that the ECP was acting as the election commission of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. He added that the judicial inquiry commission had pointed out flaws of the ECP at 40 different points in its report. “What moral authority does this ECP have to hold by-elections and LG polls?”

The PTI chief said 413 petitions had been filed against rigging in the last general elections, but “I requested the government to reopen only four constituencies, and my demand was turned down”.

Imran said that he had approached the judiciary. “The then chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, had told me that he had 20,000 pending cases to hear. I then realised that he was also involved in ‘match-fixing’. Election tribunals had to issue verdicts in four months, but they did so when half of the tenure of the incumbent assemblies has expired. How can one get justice in this system?”

The PTI chairman said he wanted the Pakistani nation to understand how their country’s system works. “This system doesn’t let honest people reach the top. All the political parties raised hue and cry after the LG polls in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, but when re-election was held in 350 constituencies, PTI’s vote bank increased from 30 to 45 per cent.”

Imran said he was sorry that he had to waste 126 days on the Islamabad sit-in, during which time he could have worked to strengthen his party. “[Defence Minister] Khawaja Asif’s constituency should be re-opened now. The polling bags should be opened and the votes recounted.”


Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2015.