ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan said on Friday it was ready to hold general elections in the country, as former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said it would not give the government more than one month to announce the date for general elections.
Since his ouster from power in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence in April, Khan has been rallying for early elections, though the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has so far resisted his demand, insisting the government would complete its term by August next year.
In April, the Election Commission of Pakistan had said elections could not be held before October as it needed at least four months to complete the process of delimitation of constituencies.
On Friday, former information minister and PTI leader Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said the party would announce the date for a huge political gathering in Islamabad within the next 48 hours. He said the PTI leadership would call on PM Sharif to dissolve assemblies and announce an election date during the gathering.
“But we cannot allow this government more than one month to announce elections,” he said during a news briefing. “If sense does not prevail in the government and it still does not announce elections, then I would say it should be ready for PTI’s next steps.”
Hussain said the party feels it cannot allow the government more time as Pakistan’s economy would be immensely damaged under their supervision and the country’s politics would head towards destruction.
“Shehbaz Sharif should announce the date for elections and then he should call a meeting of all parties to discuss [matters related to elections],” Hussain said.
Separately, Khan’s PTI party announced the ex-premier would contest the upcoming by-elections, scheduled to take place on September 25, as a candidate from all nine constituencies.
On Friday, the ECP said the months-long process of delimitation of constituencies for national and provincial assemblies had been completed.
“The process of delimitation is completed and will be published soon,” Quratul Ain Fatima, a spokesperson for the commission, told Arab News, adding that the election commission would be ready to hold fresh general elections in the country “after publication of the list.”
The commission has published all preliminary results of the delimitation on its website after an exhaustive exercise that started on April 16.
As per the constitution, the constituencies for elections to the national and provincial Assemblies are to be delimited after every census. The government notified final results of the latest population census in March and therefore, the constituencies needed to be delimited afresh.
After the delimitation process, the commission revised the number of National Assembly seats from 342 to 336 as the quota of special seats of the erstwhile federally administered tribal areas were merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The general election will now be contested on 266 National Assembly seats instead of 272. Women will have 60 and religious minorities 10 reserved seats in the house.
According to the latest delimitation, Punjab province will have 141 National Assembly seats followed by Sindh 61, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 45, Balochistan 16 and Islamabad 3.
“It is now the prerogative of the prime minister to call snap elections, or the government may want to complete its term till August 2023,” Rashid Chaudhry, deputy-director programs at the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in Islamabad, told Arab News.
He said the election commission would be bound to hold fresh elections within 90 days of the prime minister dissolving the national assembly for snap polls. If the assembly completed its tenure, the commission would be required to conduct elections within 60 days, he added.
“It is a large-scale operation to hold general elections across Pakistan, therefore it requires time for the preparation,” Chaudhry said.
Listing preparations ahead of the elections, he said the election commission had to announce polling schemes, the schedule for candidates’ nomination, their scrutiny, objections by the public and tribunals for adjudication before publishing the final list of the candidates and then allocating a campaign period for all candidates and parties.
