ISLAMABAD: The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) is set to get a new secretary general and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is likely to be re-elected president unopposed as the party goes into internal elections.

Over 2,000 members of the PML-N’s General Council from all over the country will gather at the Convention Centre here on Tuesday to elect the central office-bearers for the next four-year term.

The elections are considered to be important as the newly-elected office-bearers will be leading the party in the next general elections, scheduled in 2018.

The Central Working Committee (CWC) of the party which met on Oct 10 for the first time since the general elections in May 2013 had constituted a five-member election committee under Chaudhry Jaffar Iqbal to hold intra-party elections which had already been delayed for more than a year.

The PML-N’s CWC had last time met well before 2013 general elections to sanction allotment of tickets to the party candidates.

The election committee in its first meeting on Thursday announced the election schedule according to which the candidates can submit their nomination papers for various offices on Monday.

Political experts believe that like other parties, intra-party elections in the PML-N will merely be a formality to fulfil a legal requirement. The political parties are required to submit a certificate to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) proving they have conducted intra-party elections in compliance with Section 12 of the Political Parties Order (PPO) 2002.

The PML-N had been reminded by the ECP last month that its intra-party elections had become overdue after expiry of the four-year term of its office-bearers in July last year.

The ECP through a notice and a reminder had also warned that in case of failure in submitting certificate regarding conduct of intra-party election, party symbols would not be allocated to candidates.

A number of party leaders and lawmakers admitted the fact that elections were mere formality and nominations on all the offices were being made by Nawaz Sharif.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2016