KARACHI, Aug 4: Almost all political parties aspiring to contest the October 2002 general elections have met the deadline of August 5 to carry out the exercise of holding intra-party elections under the Political Parties Order 2002 and furnishing lists of office-bearers along with reports of audited accounts to the election commission.

The step has been taken by even those mainstream political parties who had rejected the PPO and the proposed constitutional package. These parties include all the member-parties of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy and the Muttahida Majlis Amal. According to these parties, they decided to meet every requirement of the government as they don’t want to be left behind and leave the field open for the king’s party.

Jamaat-i-Islami appears to be the only party following the rules of the game even before the PPO was issued by the Pervez government. “We need not rush to meet the deadline because our party holds elections every four years from the top to the grassroots level and the party keeps the election commission duly informed”, said party spokesman Sarfraz Ahmad.

Under the PPO it is mandatory for all political parties to formulate their constitutions and hold party elections at the federal, provincial and local levels to qualify for contesting the general elections by August 5 and submit a certified report to the election commission within seven days of the intra-party elections.

Perhaps in the history of Pakistan It was for the first in the history of the country that all large or small parties, whether newly formed or old ones, including electoral alliances, had to pass through the rigmarole of election process within a short span of 38 days.

In such a short period, the results of intra-party elections could not have been different from what has been the outcome of the entire exercise in which almost 99.9 per cent office-bearers of the parties returned unopposed. The leadership of the PPP remained the same with Benazir Bhutto being re-elected unopposed as party chairperson. The same is the case with all the factions of the Pakistan Muslim League. The leadership of the Nawaz group has been passed on to Shahbaz Sharif with a new office of Quaid being created for Nawaz Sharif.

The MQM continues to be led by Altaf Hussain and Dr Imran Farooq as chief and convener respectively, with Aftab Shaikh, Nasreen Jalil, Shaikh Liaquat Hussain, Dr Farooq Sattar, Shoaib Bokhari and Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui as deputy conveners of the central coordination committee.

The Awami National Party continues to be led by Asfandyar Wali Khan. Similarly, Abid Hussain Minto remains the head of the Pakistan Workers Party and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan continues to be led by Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani. Gulam Mustafa Jatoi continues to hold the reins of the National People’s Party. In the case of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman and Maulana Sami-ul-Haque, lead their respective factions as usual.

The case of province-based parties like the Jamhoori Watan Party of Nawab Akbar Bugti, the Baloch National Party of Sardar Akhtar Mengal, the Balochistan National Movement of Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch, the Pakhtoonkhwa Awami Milli Party of Mehmood Khan Achakzai, the Sindh National Front of Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, is no different from other parties where all the old faces have returned to lead the parties.

The Pakistan Awami Tehreek of Maulana Tahir-ul-Qadri, Tehreek-i-Insaf of Imran Khan, the National Awami Party Pakistan of Ajmal Khattak, the Sindh Democratic Alliance of Imtiaz Ahmad Shaikh saw no change in their leadership either. The entire election exercise, on the face of it, appears ridiculous and undemocratic with all office-bearers of the parties being elected unopposed. But it is worth remembering that after the promulgation of the PPO 2002, they hardly had six weeks to conduct elections. If they hadn’t rushed they would have missed the train.

However, a positive outcome of the PPO-2002 could be that every party would have to maintain record of its members, income and expenditures, hold party elections according to the party constitution and keep the election commission posted about the office-bearers and the votes taken by them. As every party would provide the details of the voting, it would be easy for the commission to evaluate the strength of each party in the masses. It would also promote democratic culture within parties.

Meanwhile, the popularity graphs of the two mainstream political parties - the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)- which were on the decline when Gen Pervez Musharraf took over the government, have gradually improved.