ECP members stand vindicated

ISLAMABAD: The four members of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), all retired high court judges, who have been unkindly bashed by some political parties since long, stood vindicated after the rejection of a reference by the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC).
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawyers’ wing Punjab leader, Gohar Nawaz Sindhu, had sponsored the reference, which was thrown away for lacking any substance against the ECP members. It came as huge embarrassment for the PTI as its stand against the ECP members was nailed once again after its dismissal by the 3-member judicial commission that had looked into its rigging charges and spurned them.
The PTI has held them responsible for ‘rigging’ in the 2013 general elections and subsequent by-polls in which it had lost. It always charged that the ECP members worked as an extension of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to defeat the PTI.
However, despite its intense attack on them, the PTI has persisted with contesting all the elections held under their supervision. After Saturday’s first phase of local polls in twenty districts of Punjab and Sindh in which it received a severe drubbing contrary to its tall claims about its popularity, the PTI has initially desisted from pouring its anger on the ECP members.
It continues to be in a state of shock because of the massive defeat and has been unable to find any punching bag for its humiliating rout.
Like other electoral exercises including the 2013 elections, local polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in May this year and subsequent by-elections elsewhere, the same ECP members oversaw the local polls in Punjab and Sindh. There have been no complaints, alleging rigging.
“We received just 156 complaints of absolutely minor nature regarding Saturday’s polls. Of them, as many as fifty-five related to Punjab while 101 pertained to Sindh,” an ECP official told The News.
He said the ECP has ordered re-poll in only 26 polling

stations - twenty in Punjab and six in Sindh. These complaints and the number of polling stations where re-poll has been directed themselves speak about the orderly nature of this electoral process, he added.
On the contrary, the official said, although the local elections in KP were a very small exercise compared to the number of voters in Punjab and Sindh, re-poll had been ordered in 365 polling stations of KP.
He said the KP polls experienced unparalleled violence, mismanagement and faux pas that were not seen in Punjab and Sindh although in the past there had been more bloody disputes in Punjab, according to its political milieu, while there had been less episodes of this kind in KP.
The official said that except the gruesome incidents in Khairur and Faisalabad with which the ECP was seized, there was no major problem in any part of Punjab and Sindh during the elections.
He said that the twenty-six polling stations where re-poll has been ordered included seven Punjab stations about which the ECP took suo motu notice without any complaint.
Never before had the ECP members, who had the constitutionally mandated five-year tenure that will expire in mid-2016, had been subjected to such merciless attacks by political parties, demanding their exit. However, they always stood ground and refused to surrender.
When in August the ECP was threatened with a sit-in in front of its offices in Islamabad by the PTI, its members said after a meeting presided over by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice (retd) Sardar Raza Khan that for the reason that they have been systematically ridiculed and stigmatized with false and baseless allegations of rigging, it was decided that since the PTI’s lawyers forum has already filed a reference in the SJC, which is the proper and competent forum for deciding such matters, they will not take any decision about their resignation until the SJC’s verdict.
The CEC had also made it clear that the ECP is a constitutional institution and that its members will not tender their resignations under pressure from any politician. He said that so far no evidence has surfaced against the ECP members. If the politicians have any proof against them, they should take the constitutional route and approach the SJC, he said adding that the ECP was a constitutional institution, and the members will continue to play their constitutional role.
The members including Roshan Ali Essani from Sindh, Riaz Kiani from Punjab, Fazlur Rehman from Balochistan and Shehzad Akbar Khan from KP said they will prove before the SJC that the PTI allegations were baseless. However, this stage did not come as the SJC dismissed the reference without feeling the need to proceed on it as it lacked any material evidence to be processed further.