PTI examines alliance missteps after reserved seats setback

KARACHI: The PTI’s Sher Afzal Marwat has said that the party made two mistakes regarding alliance formation and is now paying the price for them in the form of losing its reserved seats. Speaking to Shahzeb Khanzada on Geo News Thursday night, Marwat said that during a meeting with Imran Khan at Adiala Jail, he and Barrister Gohar apprised the PTI founder of the Peshawar High Court’s Thursday decision to dismiss the PTI-backed Sunni Ittehad Council’s petition challenging the ECP’s ruling that denied reserved seats to the party. Imran was said to have been unhappy with the decision and instructed it be challenged in the Supreme Court.

Elaborating the ‘mistakes’ made by the PTI, Marwat told Geo News that the first mistake was that instead of going ahead with the almost-finalized alliance with the JUI-Sherani group, for some reason there was a sudden announcement that the PTI would turn to the ‘batsman’, the symbol of the PTI splinter group, PTI-Nazriati. [That too did not pan out eventually]. Per Marwat, the second big mistake was when the decision to form an alliance with the Majlis Wahdate-e-Muslimeen (MWM) became victim to sectarian issues, adding that “some of us got threatening messages on WhatsApp and then it was decided to join with the Sunni Ittehad Council. These are the mistakes that led to us getting embroiled in unnecessary litigation”.Imran Khan, said Marwat, is also unhappy and disappointed over these developments. As for a way out, Marwat said that disciplinary action should be taken against those who made such decisions -- “which go against the PTI founder’s directions”. Asking why these decisions were taken “and by whom”, Sher Afzal Marwat again reiterated that “those who neglected Imran Khan’s directions should be taken to task.”

Marwat may not be completely wrong in his assessment of mistakes having been made by the party -- though there may be some difference over what mistakes were made. Lawyers say the party could have tried other options instead of taking the SIC route. Lawyer Abdul Moiz Jaferii tells The News that the PTI “would have had a far stronger case if it had not accepted the moniker of independents for its candidates, and maintained that it was an existing political party with candidates who had contested on its tickets and had been deprived only of its unified symbol.”

Jaferii says that had the party stuck by this stance, “the technical issue with the SIC not having even contested the election and not having submitted lists and not having really bothered with the electoral process would never have arisen, and the identity of the PTI itself within parliament would have been far better established and represented.”

Jaferii says that the way forward now for the PTI is to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court “where they will once again argue that the allotment of reserved seats is a constitutional right which cannot be thus curtailed through election-related legislation and rule-making.” Other lawyers including senior advocate of the Supreme Court Hafiz Ahsaan Ahmad Khokhar, constitutional lawyer Usama Khawar, and Barrister Ali Tahir also agree that this is possibly the only option open to the PTI at the moment.

Khokhar says the Peshawar High Court’s decision is per Articles 5,106, and 224 of the constitution as well as Section 104 of the Election Act 2017 read in conjunction with Rules 92, 93, and 94 of the Election Rules 2017. He also points out that this “is the first time a constitutional court has announced that independent candidates can only join a political party that has already gained parliamentary representation -- even one seat -- by contesting the general elections.”

Since the SIC neither filed its priority list under Section 104 of the Election Act for seats reserved for women along with any other seats nor exceeded the minimum proportion threshold required by Articles 51 and 106 of the constitution to win general seats, Khokhar adds that “the PTI committed a great legal error by permitting its victorious candidates to join the SIC, even though it was aware of the explicit prohibitions.”

Adding to the analysis is Barrister Ali Tahir who is also pleading the SIC case in the Sindh High Court. Tahir says that the SC route is the only option left since a “time machine” would now be needed for the PTI to merge with a party that won some seats in parliament and had submitted a list in line with Section 104 Elections Act, 2017 “(as this seems to be the reasoning of both the EC and the PHC) or submitting a list in advance, even if that list contained one name.”

While this is the main argument put forth while rejecting the PTI-SIC’s claim to the reserved seats, Tahir says that both the PHC and ECP seem to have “misconstrued” the provisions of Article 51 read with Article 106 of the constitution since “the entire scheme of the ‘reserved seats’ does not envisage the ‘allocation of any reserved seat’ to a ‘political party’ over and above its due share, and here the ECP distributed these seats in the rest of the parties, which very gladly took them.”

Lawyers have previously also pointed out that Article 51 allows independent candidates to be included in the seats won by a political party if those candidates join that party within three days of the notification.

In this context, Barrister Tahir says that Article 51 uses the term ‘political party’ not ‘parliamentary party’ and these provisions are broad enough to include ‘any political party’ which includes the SIC. When a political party can give further names after exhausting its list, asks Tahir, “then how can a party be restrained from sending a list when it gets representation in parliament?”

Usama Khawar offers a clear summary of the PTI’s dilemma at the moment, while also somewhat answering the ‘mistakes’ pointed out by Marwat, saying that “legally speaking, the PTI’s options regarding the reserved seats were limited once it lost its electoral symbol. While there may have been procedural or strategic choices the PTI could have made earlier in the electoral process, once the symbol issue was settled, its legal avenues were constrained. In essence, the PTI’s fate in this matter was largely determined by the outcome of that crucial legal battle.”