KARACHI: Describing the decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) of delaying the local government elections in Karachi and Hyderabad as ‘blow to democracy’, the opposition parties continued their protest on Friday against the ECP decision and vowed to raise their voice against “injustice and a conspiracy of ruling parties” hatched to escape from an imminent defeat in the crucial polls.

The Jamaat-i-Islami took out a number of rallies from parts of the city after Friday prayers. The workers of the right-wing party gathered outside the Sindh High Court building in Saddar where they staged a protest demonstration.

Carrying party flags, placards and banners, the protesters chanted slogans against the ECP decision and raised slogans against the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, accusing it of conspiring behind the constitutional body’s move.

Addressing the demonstration, JI Karachi chief Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman alleged that the ECP was playing “dubious and rather dirty game”.

TLP sit-in continues; JI holds citywide rallies; Murad says his govt was against postponement

On one hand, he said, it failed to remove a political administrator during the campaign for local bodies’ polls and on the other, it played the role of a “B team” for the PPP government in Sindh by delaying the crucial polls on the pretext of rains.

“If the rain was the issue, why doesn’t the ECP delay the local bodies’ polls for a few days,” he asked.

He claimed that the delay for one month showed that the ECP was hand in glove with the PPP and Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P).

TLP demands review of decision

The Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) continued its protest sit-in outside the ECP regional office and demanded that the commission review its decision.

The leaders of the party in their addresses also accused the PPP and the ruling alliance in the Centre of deliberately delaying the electoral process in Karachi and Hyderabad.

SUP to move court

Sindh United Party president Syed Jalal Mehmood in a statement “condemned” the decision and announced that they would move the court to challenge the fresh schedule of the local bodies’ polls in Sindh.

He called it a conspiracy “from the top” to favour the PPP and MQM-P as the decision of the ECP would ultimately strengthen the position of the ruling party over municipal affairs through “its political administrators” and save its partner from “devastating defeat from the province’s urban centres”.

GDA demands re-election in all four divisions

In a press conference, Sardar Abdul Raheem of the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) — an umbrella organisation of five political parties — while rejecting the delay in the second phase of local bodies’ elections in Karachi and Hyderabad, made a different demand and called for re-election in all four divisions — Sukkur, Larkana, Shaheed Benazirabad and Mirpurkhas — of Sindh where the PPP won the majority through “rigging and state power”.

He said that with fresh decision to delay the polls in Karachi and Hyderabad, the conspiracy hatched by the PPP and the ECP had been exposed as the ruling party after finding it hard to rig the elections in urban centres had used its influence in the constitutional body to delay the process.

He asked the state institutions and judiciary to take notice of ‘sheer violation’ of electoral procedures in Sindh.

Sindh govt ‘also against delay’

On the other hand, despite criticism from opposition parties, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah sounded confident that it was not his government and the party which pushed for the delay in the local government elections in Karachi and Hyderabad.

“Frankly speaking, we [Sindh government] were against any delay in the second phase of local government elections,” he said while talking to journalists just after participating in the concluding ceremony of Urs of Abdullah Shah Ghazi.

“We had even told the Election Commission that the provincial government would work to ensure the elections if any of the district receives heavy downpour. I believe that the parties which are staging demonstrations are in fact protesting against the decision of the Election Commission, not the government.”

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2022