ISLAMABAD - The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Wednesday expressed serious concerns over the electoral reforms being finalised by the parliamentary committee saying “some crucial reforms suggested by party have been ignored.”
PTI Chairman Imran Khan, first addressing a press conference and then in a statement, expressed serious concerns over the electoral reforms being finalised by the Parliamentary Committee.
He highlighted four major areas saying those have formed the core of PTI’s suggested electoral reforms that had not been considered.
These four areas included giving right to vote to overseas Pakistanis, the reconstitution of independent Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), to bring changes in the appointment of caretaker set-ups to hold elections and introducing biometric verification of voters.
The ECP and the Nadra have been delaying instituting a viable system to allow over eight million overseas Pakistanis their right to vote.
“Nadra proposed a system to the ECP through a secure electronic system but this has been shelved by the ECP… PTI finds this unacceptable,” he said.
Khan pointed out that the PTI had led the fight for an autonomous, strong, financially and administratively independent as well as transparently-appointed ECP as the party felt this was the key to the holding of free and fair elections.
In this context, the PTI has demanded that the next general elections should be conducted by a reconstituted ECP under the new rules but this demand has not even been considered.
Khan stressed that the present ECP had lost its credibility, especially in its failure to hold those responsible for the wrongdoings pointed out in the SC report on the PTI rigging petition on the 2013 elections.
At the time, the Judicial Commission had made 40 findings that pointed to serious flaws in the 2013 general elections including 35 per cent of Form 15 found missing. Yet nothing was done by the ECP to hold those responsible for the fraud accountable.
Khan also regretted that the PTI’s proposal that the procedure for appointment of members of the ECP should be through a parliamentary committee comprising 50 per cent members from the government and its allies and 50 per cent from the opposition proportionately divided according to parliamentary strength has also not been considered.
He further said that the caretaker government had a crucial role to play in ensuring a fair, free and transparent election by not misusing the administrative machinery and coercive power of the state.
As such the PTI proposed that the first consultation between leader of the House and Opposition regarding appointment of caretaker governments at the federal and provincial levels should be done away with.
Instead a committee of the House in which all political parties are represented 50 per cent members from the government and its allies and 50 per cent from opposition proportionately divided as per their parliamentary strength should discuss and decide the issue.
Khan said that it was unfortunate that this proposal had also not been considered.
He said that the fourth major reform sought by the PTI was insistence on biometric verification of voters, which would enable an independent record of the number of genuine voters at every polling station and therefore mitigate the stuffing or subsequent manipulation of the election result.
Khan made it clear that given the refusal of the government to incorporate core reforms of the election system and the institution of a fresh ECP, the PTI would be unable to accept half-baked reforms of an electoral system that had become rotten to the core.
The PTI chief during his press conference said that that the government was not serious in running the affairs smoothly as it was only busy in using all of its energies in the damage control over Panama Papers case.
He, while pointing towards the prime minister’s speech he delivered in Sialkot, said that the premier did not even talk about the firing incidents that occurred at the Line of Control (LoC).
“Nawaz Sharif and his family are only using businesses as a front to do corruption. They were using this front to recycle money earned through corruption,” the PTI chairman alleged. After the JIT report, it has now transpired that their only business was corruption, he said.
“Some of the 10 companies of Sharif family in the UK were in losses; losses of some 10 million pounds. But their kids’ properties kept growing,” the opposition leader said. Finance Minister Ishaq Dar is a self-confessed money launderer, he alleged. The case is in the court but Nawaz Sharif still has time, and he should resign, Khan said adding that the apex court provided the opportunity to the Sharif family five times to clarify their position over offshore wealth but they failed every time.
So either the PM should resign himself or he will be forced to step down, he said.
“Do you really think that nothing is affecting the Sharif family,” Khan questioned, and responded in the same breath: “Moral authority is everything in genuine democracies.”
“We ask him to step out in public and all he will hear is ‘go Nawaz, go’”, he said.
The PTI leader also rebutted the allegations of corruption, being levelled from certain quarters, against his father.
There is no doubt that the prime minister has to go now and he will not go to Jeddah but Adiala Jail this time, he said.
Khan reiterated his demand to put the entire Sharif family on the ECL.