PPP demands immediate election for city’s mayor

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has urged the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to immediately conduct the election for the Karachi mayor, saying that the mayoral should not be deferred till the by-polls in the 11 vacant union committees (UCs) of the city.

The demand to this effect was made by Sindh Labour and Human Resources Minister Saeed Ghani, who is also the Karachi PPP president, as he addressed a press conference at the media cell of the Bilawal House on Sunday.

Ghani said the ECP would set a dangerous precedent by deferring the Karachi mayor’s election till by-polls on the vacant UCs in the city.

He said that such a decision on part of the ECP would open a Pandora’s Box that would create serious problems in the future elections for the top offices of prime minister and chief ministers in the country.

He said the house of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s (KMC) City Council would be completed with elections on the reserved seats. He said the PPP’s viewpoint was that after the local government elections, polls should immediately be held to fill the reserved seats and elect the mayor and chairmen of the municipal agencies in the city.

To a question, Ghani said that he was satisfied with the overall holding of the local government polls in Karachi. “In my entire political career, I haven’t seen such peaceful elections as not a single bullet was fired anywhere during the polling,” he said.

He said the next mayor of Karachi would belong to the PPP as it had secured victory in the local government elections on the basis of the votes of the people of the city.

Answering another question, the Sindh labour minister told the media that not a single notification had been issued by the ECP so far to formally declare the result of the local government elections in any UC of the city.

Responding to another query, He said the PPP had no objection to applications filed by the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) for recounting votes in certain constituencies of the city. “Our demand is that applications filed by our candidates for recounting of votes should be considered in the same manner,” said Ghani.

He added that the PPP would contest the forthcoming by-elections in nine constituencies of Karachi. He said the PPP wanted the Jamaat-e-Islami to contest the same by-polls so that people may know the popularity of both the parties in the city.

“One should know how many votes the Jamaat-e-Islami has secured from the city in all the elections after 2002,” he said, adding that no one was expressing surprise at the Jamaat-e-Islami securing 86 seats in Karachi, but everyone was amazed at the PPP securing victory in the local government elections.

He said that one should check the performance of the PPP in the past elections in Karachi before expressing such a surprise. Answering a question, Ghani said the ECP was empowered to carry out delimitation of constituencies in the city as the population of each constituency could range between 50,000 to 75,000 as per the law and the number of voters could vary by 10 per cent. Of the 246 UCs in Karachi, only three UCs that lied in the suburban areas of the city had a population of less than 30,000, the labour minister said.

He said that till 2013, the government had been empowered to finalise the delimitation of the constituencies for conducting the local government polls. About Kashmir Day, Ghani said Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had been emphatically raising the issue of the oppressed people of Kashmir before the global community. Also on the occasion, former Muttahida Qaumi Movement MNA Khawaja Sohail Mansoor and leader of the Pakistan Restaurant Association Faizan Rawat announced joining the PPP.

Mansoor told the media that he had decided to join the PPP in order to strengthen the party to help it serve the city after its victory in the recent local government polls. Rawat said that he had decided to join the PPP after sensing that the Sindh government had been working fast to transform Karachi into a modern city as several development projects were being undertaken in the city.