LB Polls

In view of the SC orders to hold the LB elections in the country and Cantonments at the earliest the ECP finds itself in a tight corner. According to it except for the KPK no other province has passed the Local Body Govt. bill as yet as the oppositions in those provinces fear the ruling provincial governments might manoeuvre a bill favouring those in power. The bill passed by the KPK assembly is also likely to be contested in the court by the opposition there.  Another hurdle being faced by the ECP is printing of the ballot papers in that huge numbers – about 400 millions of them - in such short a time, especially when some of the provinces have yet to complete the task of delimitation of some of their constituencies also. In order to expedite matters, the ECP had untraditionally given the responsibility of preparing the voters’ list to the respective provinces, which could again provide the oppositions there with a handle to label the lists having been mano euvred to favour the ruling parties.  The ECP has announced the local bodies polls to be held on November 27 in Sindh and December 7 in Punjab and Balochistan, though the date for the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has yet to be announced. However, the National Assembly on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution, calling for the postponement of local bodies elections and thatthe new dates should be announced for the polls. I think that in view of the importance of the LB govt. system for the country, especially when the polls for which are being held for the first time under a democratic set up, these must not be held in haste and great precautions must be taken to hold them flawlessly, absolutely fairly and transparently lest all sorts of accusations and blames of corrupt practices are leveled by the losing contestants later on rendering these polls doubtful and consequently ineffective.

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)