NewsAugust 01 , 2018
Losers must respect public choice: ECP
ISLAMABAD: Secretary Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) Babar Yaqoob Fateh Muhammad on Wednesday slammed the political parties’ demand for resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice (retd) Sardar Muhammad Raza for the alleged rigged elections.
Reacting to the criticism of the Election Commission of Pakistan by the All Parties Conference (APC) on Monday evening, Babar said disrespecting the public mandate without any reason or for political reasons was a violation of the basic principles of democracy.
The Election Commission, a day later, as it had announced, came up with a detailed reaction to the APC statement on the elections. “An explanation has been sought from the provincial election commissioners, district returning officers and returning officers with regard to the (failure of) result transmission system, which would be anlaysed and scrutinized,” he noted.
Babar said the voters had exercised their right to vote in a free and fair atmosphere. “It is against the basic principles of democracy to disrespect the Pakistani people's mandate without any reason, or for politically-motivated reasons," he said.
He rejected outright the demand for resignation of the CEC and strongly condemned the APC statement. He pointed out that the Election Commission had not received any complaint of rigging from anywhere in the country and that it expected the winning and losing candidates to respect the voters' choice by accepting the election results.
He urged those “concerned about” the [election] results to opt for the due legal and constitutional process. Babar noted that international monitors like the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM), Free and Fair Election Network and the Commonwealth observers had declared the polls free and fair after observing them at different stages.
He appreciated the participation of women voters and political candidates in the electoral exercise and said that the turnout had been 52 per cent. Babar expressed the hope that all democratic forces and individuals while putting aside their personal interests would respect the state institutions for supremacy of the law, the Constitution and democracy and work towards strengthening the democratic process.
He expressed the hope that they would desist from resorting to needless criticism. He trashed claims by political parties that they were not given a level playing field in the run-up to the elections and said the commission had taken all steps to ensure that all parties had equal opportunities to carry out election campaign and also used its authority whenever needed.
"On the PML-N's request, we asked the NAB (National Accountability Bureau) to facilitate all the party candidates while the election campaign was underway [so that] they would have a level playing field."
"The NAB agreed to do so and assured us of its cooperation," he explained and also noted that the Election Commission had decided to postpone the polls in NA-60, Rawalpindi, following the award of life sentence to the PML-N leader Hanif Abbasi to ensure that all the parties had a level playing field. He claimed that the commission also took immediate notice of incidents of political figures being stopped at different places and took steps to ensure that such things were not repeated in future.
He said the commission had also taken steps to give the people an easy access to the election results and other information about polls by uploading it on its website and running informative advertisements in the media. He thanked the judiciary for providing the returning officers and district returning officers for election duties, as well as the armed forces for providing security.
Courtesy www.thenews.com.pk
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