Found wanting on many counts
The ECP bureaucracy has committed mistake after mistake, with the result that at least nine PML-N members of the National Assembly will not be able to cast their votes in elections to the offices of prime minister, speaker and deputy speaker of the National Assembly. The mistakes were committed during the revision in the schedule to fill the vacant reserved seats in the house from Punjab. Since the priority list provided by the PML-N exhausted after the notification, as it contained only 23 names, a fresh schedule inviting nominations for rest of the seats was issued the same day. But the nominations were invited from the PML-N only for eight instead of nine seats. Another mistake was that no time was provided for deciding appeals against the acceptance or rejection of nomination papers in the schedule.
What about tribunals? Again, thanks to the incompetence shown by the ECP bureaucracy the election tribunals are not in place yet, leading to widespread complaints. Under the law, the tribunals can be approached within 45 days after the results are notified. Since the results of the May 11 elections were notified on May 22, the complainants have already lost ten days on account of ECP’s negligence. With the ECP comprising retired judges, was there none to tell its bureaucracy that it was not permissible to announce the election tribunals without prior consultation with the CJ’s of the four High Courts? Why can’t the ECP bureaucracy take decisions on time? Efficient working required the fixing of the number of tribunals before the elections. The ECP had earlier announced the formation of 14 tribunals. We are now being told that a decision has been taken to almost double that number. As this has financial implications, appointments are likely to be further delayed making the already distraught litigants further desperate. Obviously proper attention was not given to the issue well before the elections.
One expected the ECP to be aware of the security situation in Balochistan, all the more so when attacks had been launched on its own offices in the province before the polling. One also expected that it would make foolproof arrangements for the counting of the votes and timely announcement of results in sensitive constituencies. The ECP however failed to come up to the expectations. It is claimed by the BNP-M that the election results were delayed by five to seven days in all constituencies where BNP-M candidates had bright chances of winning. “In those five to seven days, undemocratic forces changed the people’s mandate and caused our candidates’ defeat”. Announcement of BNP-M chief Akhtar Mengal’s win was delayed by 17 days! This imposed unmerited political losses on the BNP-M as its result was announced a day after the ECP allocated the reserved seats to the winning parties. The party thus lost a reserved seat that it could get in the Balochistan Assembly.
