ISLAMABAD: President Arif Alvi asked Pakistan’s election regulatory authority on Wednesday to “immediately” announce the schedule for provincial polls in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to quell any speculation about their likely postponement.
The president said it in a letter to chief election commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja only a few weeks after the dissolution of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies on the instruction of former prime minister Imran Khan who wanted to build pressure on the government to call early elections across Pakistan.
Some government functionaries, including law minister Azam Nazir Tarar, hinted at the possibility of delaying the provincial elections amid growing economic and political uncertainty, though they need to be held within 90 days of the dissolution of assemblies under the constitution.
The president, a Khan ally, said in the letter he was under oath “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” while pointing out that some of the strongest democracies in the world had even allowed voting amid conflicts and civil wars.
“I am of the firm view that there are no such circumstances as may furnish any justification for delaying or postponing of elections,” he said, adding any such step was likely to cause serious setbacks to democracy in the long run.
“It will thus be in the fitness of things and in accordance with Constitution and law i.e. Election Act, 2017, to immediately announce the date of polls by issuing election schedule and put an end to such dangerous speculative propaganda for these and future general elections,” he added.
Pakistan witnessed several delays in local government elections in Sindh province in the wake of the devastating monsoon floods last year. The election commission denied Sindh administration’s repeated requests to postpone the polls in Karachi and Hyderabad in January before the last phase of local elections was held.
Prior to that, local government polls were also delayed in the federal capital by the election authority following a request by the government.
