PML-Q rejects electoral reforms bill

LAHORE: PML-Q president Ch Shujaat Hussain has said his party rejects the government bill for electoral reforms. 

Till the required reforms for making next elections transparent and clean, we will not sign the government’s draft bill, he added. In a statement issued on Thursday, Ch Shujaat Hussain said there is nothing new in the bill which the government wants to present in the parliament in the name of electoral reforms, basic thing is that in the present system of Election Commission the status of the Chief Election Commissioner is only in the name and he has no powers, he is bound by the majority opinion of the remaining members of the Election Commission meaning that if majority members of the commission declare any winning assembly candidate as defeated then the Chief Election Commissioner cannot provide relief to the winning assembly candidate.

He said it is regrettable that the Parliamentary Committee for Electoral Reforms has so far held 100 meetings on which Rs 100 crore has been spent out of the national exchequer but the result is zero, it is also not comprehensible that proceedings of these meetings have been kept in camera, secret, as if the Parliamentary Committee was not doing electoral reforms but nuclear reforms, PML-Q demands that entire proceedings of the Parliamentary till now should be made public so that people as to what joke the government is going to play with the nation in the name of electoral reforms. Ch Shujaat Hussain said PML-Q was being represented in the Parliamentary Committee by Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, who is in Indonesia these days, and he has directed him that no PML-Q representative will sign the government bill.