Justice Wajihuddin criticises ECP’s ‘contradictory’ stance

Justice (retd) Wajihuddin Ahmed, chairman of the Aam Log Ittehad, highlighted the stance of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) towards the commoners at a press Conference which he addressed at the Karachi Press Club on Monday afternoon.

He said that the Aam Log Ittehad was an egalitarian party and had promised the people that 80 per cent of its membership would be from among commoners. All those who were drawing an income of less than Rs100,000 per month would be most welcome to join, he added.

Justice Ahmed said that some elements tried to hijack the party and establish their stranglehold over it but were taken care of.

He said that according to the Election Act, 2017, the party was supposed to deposit Rs200,000 and the signatures and CNIC copies of 2,000 members, which we did but the intruding group did not. Thus, said, “we stopped the party from being delisted”.

“We brought it to the notice of the ECP that the rival group had failed to deposit the signatures and the CNICs of the members. However, a lady member of the bench came up with the palliative that this was an intra-party matter and the ECP could not intervene.”

However, he said, that the ECP had intervened in the cases of Aisha Gulalai, Akbar Babar and Farooq Sattar. “We called for revisiting the case,” said Justice Ahmed.

“Vide an order dated June 13, the ECP terminated the interference of the rival group and recognised us as the legitimate entity”, he added.

He said that the question of symbol for the election was raised. “We asked first and foremost for the school bag denoting our commitment to the cause of mass education, and the windmill, the rationale being that we wanted to tell the electorate our preference for clean energy which is a crying need. Now, on the 26th, they ask us to have intra-party elections in order to be allotted a symbol. How can we manage that with such a short time left for the elections?” he asked.

Thus far, he lamented, the party had neither been given a symbol nor a short order despite the fact that there was less than one month to go for the elections.

Lots of candidates who were eligible and honest had approached them but there was nothing the party could do, he added.

“We are not boycotting the elections. We shall claim damages,” the former Judge of the Supreme Court said.

He lamented that the ECP, which was supposed to ensure transparency, did not even supply a copy of the short order.

He said all the main parties were playing politics based on money and said it was a sad irony that nobody even questioned the candidates as to where they got all those pots and pots of money from. The parties, he said, were not taken to account for the dubious sources of their wealth.

Justice Ahmed asked the ECP to promptly communicate copies of the requisite orders to them so that they could take timely action.