PESHAWAR: Qaumi Watan Party chairman Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said on Saturday that his party was pondering over convening an all-party conference on the issue of delimitation of constituencies as the Election Commission of Pakistan’s decision in this regard was not acceptable to majority of the political parties.

Speaking at a press conference at his party secretariat here, he said that delimitation of the national and provincial assemblies’ constituencies was made against the ground realities as it should have been done on the basis of voter lists instead of population of different cities.

He said that many of the people had shifted to big cities in connection with jobs, but their votes were still in native areas while the ECP decreased the seats against the public interests.

“The credit goes to QWP which raised voice for the census with the objective to give due rights to the smaller provinces, but the ECP delayed the announcement of delimitation for one and a half months.

Demands probe into horse-trading in Senate elections

The general elections are fast approaching and political parties will be unable to make preparations if their reservations are not addressed at the earliest,” he said.

Mr Sherpao said the ECP had not taken the political parties into confidence on delimitation which would badly affect their election campaign.

He said that the delimitation of constituencies in a short time would create complications for the political parties.

About the Senate elections, he said that horse-trading had polluted the political affairs and the matter had not been probed to bring the wrongdoers to book.

He said that manoeuvring for chairman and deputy chairman of the Senate had virtually turned into a tug of war.

He said that the behaviour adopted in the Senate election would negatively affect the national elections. He said that such issues should be settled politically.

The QWP chief said that with the focus on non-issues like Panama papers in the centre the important issues such as Pak-Afghan relations, Fata-KP merger, NFC award and CPEC had been put on the backburner, which had aggravated the sense of deprivation among the smaller provinces.

He said that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government was boasting about reforms in the police, health and education departments for political point scoring, but unfortunately the situation had worsened, which showed that the rulers were living in a fool’s paradise.

Mr Sherpao criticised the PTI-led provincial government for making frequent changes in design of the Bus Rapid Transit project. He said that the slow pace of work due to ill-planning would increase the miseries of masses.

He said that governance system had been thrown into disarray during the present government, while PTI chief Imran Khan was befooling masses in the name of ‘change’.

He claimed that the billion tree tsunami project was present on papers only. “It is a serious case of irregularities and the National Accountability Bureau should probe it,” he demanded.

The QWP chief said that his party would strive for the rights of Pakhtuns on every platform.

He said that confrontation among the state institutions had created political vagueness in the country, which would aggravate the sense of deprivation among the masses.

He said that the political parties should focus on general elections, as timely elections would be helpful in ensuring stability of the democratic system. On this occasion, several workers of other political parties, led by Nawabzada Wahab Khan of Tank district, joined QWP.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2018