ISLAMABAD: Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah has urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to propose possible names for the post of chief election commissioner at the earliest to fill the key constitutional office by the Nov 13 deadline set by the Supreme Court.

Sources told Dawn that Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and Mr Shah on Sunday got in touch over the phone and discussed the appointment of a CEC in the light of the Supreme Court’s Oct 30 directions.

Know more: SC wants selection of CEC by Nov 13

Mr Shah was said to have told the finance minister that under the Constitution, the prime minister was required to first suggest three candidates for CEC and that he would propose names of candidates only if the opposition objected to the government’s nominees.

Rejecting a request by Mr Shah for an additional three months to complete the appointment process, the Supreme Court had warned that it would withdraw the apex court judge currently serving as acting CEC if the appointment was not made by Nov 13. The SC issued the order after an earlier court-ordered deadline expired on Oct 28. Currently, Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali is serving as acting CEC. Justice Jamali had replaced the current chief justice as acting head of the ECP on July 23 to become the third acting CEC in less than a year.

Khursheed Shah waiting for PM to propose nominees for the post

Talking to Dawn, Mr Shah said he expected the prime minister to initiate the process soon.

He said he had also asked PPP’s legal expert Aitzaz Ahsan and constitutional expert Raza Rabbani to suggest names that he could forward to the government after obtaining approval from the party leadership.

Responding to a question, Mr Shah said he would consult all opposition parties, including the protesting Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), and take them into confidence on the issue so that no-one could point fingers at the appointment of a future CEC.

The PPP leader said he and his party were committed to implementing the court’s order and expressed the hope that despite the short timeframe they would be able to complete the process of the CEC’s appointment by the court’s deadline.

Mr Shah, however, said he did not see any constitutional crisis even if the CEC office remained vacant for a few days after the withdrawal of the acting CEC on Nov 13.

Federal Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid, during a news conference on Saturday, said that they were waiting to receive the court’s orders, which would be examined by a legal team.

Both the government and the opposition had earlier agreed to delay the appointment of a permanent CEC because the parliamentary committee on election reforms was busy formulating its recommendations, believing that any appointment to the key office carried out in haste could create legal and political problems in the future, as the new CEC would remain in office until the next elections, due to be held in 2018.

It may be recalled that Mr Shah had already suggested that the Constitution should be amended to end the existing stipulation that the CEC should be a retired judge. He suggested that apart from retired judges, politicians or retired bureaucrats should also be eligible to hold the office.

Earlier this year, the prime minister and the opposition leader had agreed to appoint the retired SC judge Rana Bhagwandas as the CEC and the government had even prepared a bill to get it passed from parliament in order to remove a legal hitch in his appointment.

Since Justice Bhagwandas has served as the chairman of the Federal Public Service Commission after his retirement from the judiciary, he is ineligible for any future appointment in the service of Pakistan under the law.

Later, when a number of parties opposed getting a person-specific legislation passed by parliament, the government dropped the idea.

The office of the CEC fell vacant when retired Justice Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim voluntary tendered his resignation in July last year amid allegations of rigging and irregularities in the general elections by almost all the political parties.

Retired Justice Ebrahim was the first man who was appointed as the CEC after the passage of the 18th Constitution Amendment under which the tenure of the office has also been increased to five years from three.

The CEC was earlier appointed by the president but under Article 213 of the Constitution, the prime minister in consultation with the leader of opposition in the National Assembly is required to forward three names to a parliamentary committee for confirmation of one of them.

Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2014