LAHORE, Feb 8: Over 4,500 fellows of the Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP) may not be able to cast vote in Saturday’s elections.
Officials said on Thursday that a large number of CPSP fellows might not be able to cast votes because most of them had dues outstanding against them or had not yet received identification slips necessary for the purpose. A good number of them are also abroad, they said.
There are around 9,000 CPSP fellows.
The officials said the chief election commissioner had advertised in the national press three days prior to the announcement of the elections’ schedule that an identification slip was required to cast a vote. They said slips had been dispatched to members and it was feared that many of them might not receive them on time.
Reports suggest that a neck-and-neck contest is expected between the sitting council led by Prof Sultan Farooqi and the Friends of CPSP headed by Prof Zafrullah Chaudhry.
Maintenance of financial discipline and fee reduction for trainee doctors are on the opposition’s agenda while the sitting council promises to continue with its doctors-friendly policies.
The Friends of CPSP has expressed its serious concern over transparency in the elections. It says polling officers have been instructed by the college authorities that there will be no polling agents during voting, counting and compilation of results. Process of counting will be kept secret and local result will not be announced at any of polling stations. All the results will be dispatched to the chief election commissioner for the announcement of final results on Feb 11 (Sunday) and the number of votes of winners or losers will not be announced.
The Friends of CPSP says the federal government on its request has directed the CPSP to allow presence of polling agents during voting, counting and dispatch of results. It claims that the authorities concerned are not following the directive in this regard.
The CPSP elections will be held at 11 regional centres and its head office in Karachi. The sitting council has fielded 20 per cent new candidates for their election as council members while the Friends of CPSP has put up candidates on all seats — 11 in Punjab, six in Sindh, two in the NWFP and one in Balochistan.
The Friends of CPSP candidates from the four provinces are;
PUNJAB: Prof Zafarullah Chaudhry, Prof Khalid Masood Gondal, Prof Amir Aziz, Prof Rakhshanda Rehman, Prof Muhammad Amjad from Lahore; Prof Muhammad Shoaib Shafi and Prof Rizwana Chaudhry from Rawalpindi; Dr Muhammad Amir from Islamabad; Dr Muhammad Asghar Butt from Faisalabad; Prof Ghulam Mujtaba from Multan; and Dr Manzoor Husain Malik from Bahawalpur.
SINDH: Dr Rizwan Azmi, Prof Syed Mohib Rab, Prof Tariq Mahmood Khan, Dr Ghulam Asghar Channa and Prof Ataur Rehman from Karachi and Prof Abdul Sattar Memon from Hyderabad.
NWFP: Prof Muhammad Daud Khan from Peshawar and Prof Ziaur Rehman from Abbotabad.
BALOCHISTAN: Prof Abdullah Jan Jaffar.
The CPSP was established in 1962 on the pattern of the Royal Colleges of the United Kingdom as the first-ever postgraduate medical university. Its prime function is to arrange training for future medical specialists of the country within the college’s approved departments/institutions in accordance with competency-based curricula.
