ISLAMABAD - The offer of discussion on electoral reforms by Prime Minister Imran Khan to the opposition seems to be unsuccessful in minimising the political tension between the government and the opposition.

The PTI’s government, in its third attempt, is making an effort to hold a meaningful dialogue with the opposition parties to discuss the use of electoral voting machines (EVMs) to reclaim the credibility of elections in the country. The government in its first attempt informally invited opposition in the National Assembly to hold a discussion on complicated matters related to the electoral reforms. Advisor to the Prime Minister on Parliamentary Affairs Dr Babar Awan, on a point of order, in the National Assembly proceedings invited the opposition to engage with the government on electoral reforms. However, the response was very discouraging as no parliamentary leader from opposition parties even responded to the proposal.

The second attempt was again from the government in the Parliament, but it also proved futile. Sensing the cold response from the joint opposition, the National Assembly speaker played a supportive role and dropped an idea to form a parliamentary committee on electoral reforms. The fate of this parliamentary body is also unclear as the opposition parties have still not shared names of their party members for their representation.

The fourth attempt was from Prime Minister Imran to directly invite the opposition to “sit together” with the government and discuss the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) to reclaim the credibility. Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhary and PM’s Advisor Dr Babar Awan also jointly held a press conference to gauge the seriousness of the opposition on this complicated matter. 

Though the opposition has not flatly refused to work on electoral reforms, but they are not ready to give it preference in the current deadly wave of Coronavirus [COVID-19]. They asked the government to concentrate only on vaccination availability to all the citizens of the country. 

“The neighboring country [India] is facing a dangerous situation due to infectious virus, we also need to only focus on COVID-19 as rest of the matters could be dealt with later,” says former National Assembly deputy speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi talking to this newspaper. “Mr Prime Minister! There is a need to save lives,” commented PML-N’s Chief Whip responding to the query related to the government’s offer to hold dialogue on electoral reforms. Abbasi advised the government to set priorities before engaging the opposition on important matters.

His colleague PML-N Information Secretary Marriyum Aurangzeb was not even shy to allege the prime minister for cooking up a new plan to rig elections with his recent rant about the EVMs.

The response of the second largest opposition party [PPP-P] was also not satisfactory on this matter.  The statements of PPP-P’s senior members clearly indicate their unwillingness to sit with the government on this matter. They commented that the government needs to focus on the availability of Corona vaccine, unemployment and price hike issues in the country before holding discussion on elections related matters. On the other hand, the opinion of parliamentary and constitutional experts is quite different from the parliamentary opposition parties. They believed the government deals with a plethora of matters even in crisis time. “The government has to deal with different matters side by side.”

Ministers and advisors in different fields worked in any of the government to deal with different affairs,” they said, mentioning that the experts in health would be dealing with the Coronavirus related matter and in the same way other experts in their fields have to perform their jobs side by side. They termed the opposition’s point of view as ‘Criticism for the sake of criticism’.

It needs to understand here that the government wants the Opposition to formally share its willingness to participate in electoral reforms and other Parliamentary bodies to resolve the pending matters. 

On the other hand, the Opposition parties for the last many months have not been participating in the Parliamentary bodies formed to resolve the pending matters. In the last six months, the Speaker of the National Assembly Asad Qaiser had also thrice cancelled the important meetings called to mutually discuss and resolve the pending matters.

The parliamentary experts believed that the government would succeed to engage Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in talks after the Eidul Fitr. The rest of the opposition parties would also have no other option to sit with the government to express their point of view on electoral reforms.  It may be noted here that the government coalition parties have already assured their support for introducing electoral voting machines (EVMs) in the country’s election process.