By our correspondent
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s main opposition party accused the country’s election commission on Saturday of delaying its poll symbol, a bat, to hurt its chances in the upcoming general elections.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by former prime minister Imran Khan, said it had fulfilled all the legal requirements to obtain its poll certificate, which would allow it to use the bat symbol on the ballot papers.
But the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had not yet issued the certificate, despite the party holding intra-party elections on Dec. 2, in which Barrister Gohar Khan was elected as the new chairman.
The PTI intra-party election was challenged by its opponents and some of its founding members.
The ECP, the country’s top electoral body, had ordered the PTI in mid-November to hold intra-party elections within 20 days to retain the bat as its poll symbol after it found that the party had violated its constitution by extending the tenure of its office-bearers without holding fresh polls.
The commission had annulled the PTI’s previous intra-party polls because they were not conducted following the party’s constitution and the law.
The order came at a time when general elections are about two months away and political parties are ratcheting up their poll campaigns across the country. The general elections are expected to be held on February 8, 2024.
Khan, who is serving a prison sentence for corruption, stepped down as the party head on legal grounds that could lead to losing the party’s symbol in the upcoming general elections.
“The fact that the commission has not yet released the election symbol even 60 days before the elections, even after the submission of the results of the intra-party elections by the chairman of Tehreek-e-Insaf, is a cause of grave concern and is nothing short of a brazen attempt to rig the elections before they even happen,” the party said in a statement.
The PTI said this delay was a form of pre-poll rigging and a violation of the constitution and democracy.
“It is clear that the commission has no legal right to withhold the bat symbol, and there is no precedent for this in history. The nefarious attempt to forcibly seize the bat symbol is a shameful attempt to subvert the constitution, democracy, transparent elections, and to deprive crores of Pakistanis of their political identity.”
It also alleged that it was the target of a state-sponsored conspiracy to rig the elections and exclude it from politics.
“Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf is being targeted by the worst form of state oppression and shameful political engineering in every way before the elections,” the party said. “All evidence and signs indicate the state’s intentions to commit historical fraud in the elections.”
The party accused the election commission and its leadership of being biased and discriminatory against the PTI, and of issuing decrees aimed at erasing the party’s political presence.
“In order to snatch the election symbol of the bat from Tehreek-e-Insaf, the commission issued an order to hold intra-party elections again under the party’s constitution without any legal justification, declaring the intra-party elections held under the party’s constitution a year and a half ago as null and void. Despite all its reservations, Tehreek-e-Insaf complied with the commission’s illegal order of November 23 and held intra-party elections in a clean and transparent manner before challenging it in the Lahore High Court.”
The ECP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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