LAHORE: Defending its decision of withdrawing support for the proposed law on new delimitations, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) says the fear that the judiciary may rescind the law even if enacted and ignoring the prior approval of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) for it became the reasons behind the review of the earlier decision.

“We didn’t drag our feet on the [draft] delimitation law rather we feared that the court could declare as null and void the law which also lacked approval of the Council of Common Interests (CCI),” PPP Punjab chapter president Qamar Zaman Kaira says.

At a press conference here on Tuesday, he said Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah had already announced raising the census issue with the CCI and the federal government should have responded to the argument.

About the Nov 10 deadline for passing the law as per requirement of the Election Commission, he said the government should have begun the process earlier in view of the time needed by the ECP for completing preparations for 2018 general election instead of urging the stakeholders now to take a decision in haste.

The former federal minister believed that parliament was empowered enough to extend the deadline needed for the passage of the draft law. Alternatively, he said, the PPP is ready to accept the elections on the basis of the previous census.

He told a questioner that party chairperson Bilawal Bhutto had already made it clear that the Constitution doesn’t have room for any technocrat setup. He chided the PML-N for giving a weak statement on the issue by just commenting that no technocrat government could have performed better than the N government in the current circumstances.

Responding to a question, he said those taunting the PPP for going against democracy by not supporting the draft law on delimitations had never sided with democracy rather they were supporters of the process for derailing democracy.

Mr Kaira said the party’s Foundation Day ceremonies would be held on Nov 30 at all district headquarters while the main ceremony would be held in Islamabad on Dec 5 where Mr Bilawal Bhutto would also announce future line of action of the party.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2017