RECENTLY, three editorials have appeared in your paper with the constant accusatory mantra of the PTI doing agitational politics. It is unfortunate that you have failed to grasp that the PTI has always sought to work within the system to get justice and has only resorted to agitation when all other venues for redress were found closed.

Had the government opened the four constituencies for the investigation of electoral rigging/maladministration/lapses — whatever you want to call it — or set up the Inquiry Commission when we had demanded these after the 2013 general elections, there would have been no need for us to have to go for the sit-in. Nor should it be forgotten that every political party had claimed rigging in the 2013 polls, including Nawaz Sharif at a public meeting in Haripur.

Even after the commencement of the sit-in, the government wasted valuable time in setting up the inquiry commission.

Now the inquiry commission report has pointed to at least 40 wrongdoings on the part of the ECP and election tribunals have vindicated the PTI’s position in three of the four constituencies.

So justice can only be served if those responsible in the ECP, including the four provincial commissioners, resign for failing to hold transparent elections. It is not just the PTI alone that is seeking their resignation; other political parties, including the PPP, have demanded the same.

That the CEC chose not to respond to the queries posed by the PTI chairman is unfortunate. Surely, it is the ethical and moral duty of the CEC to respond to such queries posed by the leader of the second largest national political party. To hide behind legal semantics is not a tenable position.

While the appointments may be tenure-secured constitutionally, that does not mean the commissioners are above public accountability.

It is the obduracy of the provincial commissioners and the refusal or inability of the ECP to self-correct its institutional shortcomings that has led the PTI to give a call for protest outside the ECP. A peaceful protest is the party’s democratic right.

Shireen M. Mazari
Spokesperson for Chairman and Chief Whip in NA

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2015

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