KARACHI: There will be no polling for the annual election of the Karachi Press Club this year after all candidates of The Democrats returned unopposed for the year 2023 on Tuesday.

According to the KPC, Saeed Sarbazi of Business Recorder and Shoaib Ahmed of News One have been elected unopposed president and secretary, respectively.

Mushtaq Sohail of Daily Kawish has been elected Vice President, Muhammad Aslam Khan of Samaa News Joint Secretary and Ehtisham Saeed Qureshi of Daily Ummat as Treasurer. Kulsoom Jahan, Farooq Sami, Rameez Vohra, Rafique Bashir, Shams Keerio, Zulfiqar Ali Rajper and Zulfiqar Ali Wahoocho elected as members of the Governing Body.

They were elected unopposed after all opposing groups and members withdrew their nomination papers the day the panels were to be announced.

It is said to be the first time ever that an entire KPC panel has been elected unopposed.

Senior journalist Ghazi Salahuddin was the last president of KPC to have been elected unopposed (although his entire panel went through the election process).

Speaking to Dawn on Tuesday, he said: “There is an entire panel coming unopposed which has two aspects to it,” he said. “The positive aspect is that there will be no bitterness during the elections because there will be no elections. But the other aspect is that the Press Club is for journalists and there is always room for difference of opinion in journalism. So I would have welcomed the elections at KPC. You also need to accept dissent or deal with descent in journalism,” he concluded.

Former KPC president Mazhar Abbas said an entire panel coming in unopposed shows the people’s confidence in that panel but it also points to some trouble among the opposing groups.

“The KPC elections have always brought up a healthy competition. Getting elected unopposed here should not become a new tradition, hopefully. It is also true that not all the KPC members or KPC voters visit the club often. They are approached by the candidates and their groups to request for votes, which involve them in the process, too,” he pointed out.

“Still, even though there are going to be no elections on this year’s last Saturday like there used to be every year, I would like to see members attending the general body meeting to discuss the affairs of the Club that still need attention,” he said.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2022