Sindh PTI demands ECP conduct LG polls on a single day

KARACHI: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Sindh president and former federal minister Syed Ali Haider Zaidi has demanded that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) should hold local government elections in Karachi as soon as possible and on a single day.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, he said the ECP was meeting on Wednesday (today) regarding the holding of the elections in Karachi, and on the agenda was a date for the polls and the other was to decide if the elections should be conducted in two phases.

But Zaid asked the ECP why there was no discussion about compliance with the Supreme Court verdict in this regard.

The continuous postponement of the local government elections in Karachi was a political decision that favoured the PPP and “their partners in crime, the MQM”, he said, adding that everyone knew that the PTI was heading towards a sweeping victory in Karachi and the only way to stop it was to postpone the election process on “flimsy excuses like a lack of security personnel”.

He argued that when the federal government can ask for police, FC and Rangers from other provinces, why the ECP cannot do the same.

Zaidi strongly opposed holding the LG elections in Karachi in two phases and believed that it would be equivalent to pre-election rigging, as the results of one area would be used to influence the remaining half of the elections.

He demanded that the elections must be held on a single day to ensure no gerrymandering occurred, as the mayor of Karachi was elected by an electoral college comprising the chairmen of all union councils.

He said the ECP shouldn’t have begun the electoral process until the instructions of the chief justice of Pakistan were complied with.

The people of Karachi knew all too well that the past and present PPP-led Sindh governments didn’t care about their welfare and they only wanted to loot and plunder Karachi for their benefit, the PTI leader said.

This, he added, was evident in various global surveys that ranked Karachi as one of the worst livable cities in the world when it came to several factors, like infrastructure, the environment, cleanliness, healthcare and education.