ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s election oversight body will today, Monday, scrutinize thousands of nomination papers filed by candidates last week for the upcoming national polls scheduled for Feb. 8.
Thousands of candidates across Pakistan rushed to file their nomination papers on Sunday as an extended deadline given by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to submit them expired on Dec. 24.
The returning officers will now scrutinize the papers from Dec. 25-30 during which they would either accept or reject the nominations. The ECP will allot election symbols to candidates on Jan. 13, with the polling date set for Feb. 8.
“Once the deadline ends, the ECP is set to conduct scrutiny of the nomination papers from Monday and continue it till Dec 30 as per the commission’s updated schedule,” the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) said on Sunday.
Over 128 million electorates will be exercising their right to vote in the upcoming national polls for 266 national and 593 provincial assembly seats across Pakistan.
The exercise to submit nomination papers, however, was marred by allegations of pre-poll rigging by former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. The PTI has accused police of snatching their candidates’ nomination papers and carrying out raids at their homes to deter them from contesting the polls.
Khan, arguably the most popular politician in Pakistan currently, has been in jail since August after he was convicted by a Pakistani court in a case relating to the alleged illegal sale of state gifts during his tenure.
He was disqualified from holding public office and contesting elections for five years by the ECP after his conviction. Khan, who denies any wrongdoing, has blamed the powerful military, his political rivals, and the ECP for using unfair means to keep him and the PTI away from elections. All three strongly deny the allegations while the caretaker government has repeatedly said all political parties would be given an equal chance to contest elections.
After the deadline to submit nomination papers concluded on Sunday, the ECP issued a list of registered political parties throughout the country.
“The updated list no longer includes Imran Khan, the founder of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), as the head of the party, marking PTI as a leaderless political entity,” the APP said.
This was yet another blow to the party after the ECP ruled last week that the PTI could no longer retain its iconic bat symbol for the polls. The verdict was issued by the regulator after it declared the PTI’s intraparty elections “null and void.”
Political analysts have raised alarm over media reports of alleged pre-poll rigging, saying that a rigged election would not bring stability in the country.
“It is bad politics and bad optics,” political analyst Zebunnisa Burki told Arab News on Sunday. “If PTI loses these elections even genuinely, they would be justified in saying the elections were rigged based on these pre-poll rigging incidents.”