By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s opposition has asked for time to consider an invitation from the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to join a 30-member parliamentary committee on electoral reforms, a body expected to examine allegations of rigging in the 2024 general election.
A PPP delegation led by Senator Sherry Rehman called on Senate Opposition Leader Allama Raja Nasir Abbas on Friday, a day after a separate party team made the same request to Mehmood Khan Achakzai, the opposition leader in the National Assembly.
“He told us that he will respond [to the proposal] after consultation. We are hopeful that their response will be positive,” Rehman said in a video statement after the meeting.
Abbas and Achakzai lead the opposition alliance Tehreek-e-Tahafuz-e-Ayin-e-Pakistan as vice chairman and chief respectively. According to sources, both want to consult the leadership of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) before giving a formal answer. Abbas welcomed the delegation and thanked PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, Rehman said. He also agreed with the proposal in principle, according to reports of the meeting, that the electoral process should be made more transparent.
The PPP team included party secretary general Nayyar Bokhari, Senator Waqar Mehdi and Nadeem Afzal Chan. Beside Abbas and Achakzai, the opposition side was represented by Noor-ul-Haq Qadri and Senator Ali Zafar.
The proposal was first put to the opposition by Bilawal in the National Assembly on Thursday. He said Parliament had decided to form the committee at the PPP’s request and asked Achakzai to nominate a representative, noting that the opposition itself had called electoral rigging a “fundamental issue”. He also urged Achakzai to use the authority handed to him by the jailed PTI founder, Imran Khan, to direct opposition members to take part in House committees, and said the boycott of committee work had weakened Parliament.
PTI lawmakers quit the parliamentary standing committees last year on the instructions of their party chief.
Rehman said the committee’s purpose was to bring government and opposition together to draw up joint proposals for free, fair and transparent elections. Its recommendations would go before Parliament for approval, she said, adding that reform had to be a collective undertaking if it was to command public confidence.
“Repeated questions over the credibility of the electoral process undermine the credibility of Parliament itself,” she said.
Speaking to reporters, she was blunter about the cost of staying away. “If they (opposition members) remain absent, how will their reservations be addressed?” she asked, describing parliamentary committees as the “heart of parliamentary work”. She said the PTI should return to the other committees as well.
Zafar, the PTI’s parliamentary leader in the Senate, thanked the PPP for the offer and said the party would discuss it internally before replying. Electoral reform was essential for strengthening democracy, he said, but Pakistan’s central problem was not a shortage of laws.
“The real problem lies in their implementation,” he said, adding that the question was how existing laws would be enforced “honestly, transparently and without discrimination”. New legislation alone, he warned, would not deliver the desired results.
PTI chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan demanded equal representation for government and opposition on the committee, and said any reforms must be impartial and reflect public aspirations. That demand appears difficult to square with the formula set out by the government.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Tariq Fazal Chaudhry said the National Assembly had already approved the committee and the speaker would soon issue its notification. The committee will have 30 members, 20 from the National Assembly and 10 from the Senate, with seats shared among parties according to their strength in each house. Names have not been finalised. The speaker has written to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Mr Chaudhry, Senate Chairman Yousuf Raza Gilani and Mr Achakzai asking them to propose members.
Chaudhry said efforts would be made to give weight to “positive, constructive and workable” proposals from every parliamentary party.
According to sources, the committee is expected to look at alleged rigging in the 2024 election, subsequent by-elections, and polls in Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. It would also seek to identify those responsible for irregularities and recommend ways to prevent a repeat.
A source present at Friday’s meeting said the PPP delegation also urged the opposition to sit down with Sharif over the appointment of a new chief election commissioner. The incumbent has remained in office two years after retirement, under a provision of the 27th Constitutional Amendment that keeps the holder in post until a successor is named.
Raja Pervez Ashraf, the PPP leader who met Achakzai on Thursday, said the party wanted the PTI in both the electoral reforms committee and the standing committees. Achakzai, he said, had asked for time to consult.
Earlier this month, addressing a rally in Karachi, Bhutto-Zardari said constructive engagement by the opposition with the federal government could lead to the lifting of governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
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