Govt considering amending election laws: Tarar

ISLAMABAD: Federal Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar has said that the government is seriously considering to amend the election laws for ensuring transparent elections in the country.

“We are seriously thinking and carefully examining that at least those amendments should be included which already have the consensus,” said Azam Nazir Tarar Federal Law Minister while addressing a stakeholder’s conference on electoral transparency jointly hosted by Center for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) Coalition for Elections and Democracy (CED) and Fredrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

The conference was attended by Muttahida Qaum Movement’s (MQM) Mustafa Kamal, Taj Haider of Pakistan People’s party, Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) Senator Anwar Kakar, Fredrick Neumann’s Birgit Lamm, PILDAT’s Ahmed Bilal Mehboob , CPDI’s Mukhtar Ahmed Ali and others. Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar said that elections are very important but we need to see the environment too. He said that unfortunately successive governments did not give importance to the local government elections which are key for democracy and the democratic process. He said we need to change our attitude towards this.

Senator Taj Haider of PPP while addressing the conference said that the census and delimitations are key ingredients for free and fair elections in any country but no one talks about these issues. Mustafa Kamal, a senior leader of MQM said that his party boycotted the latest local government elections in Karachi over non-transparent census. While talking about delimitations he said that there are serious flaws in the delimitations in Karachi too as there are union councils where you have 20,000 voters and there are union councils where 90,000 votes are registered. He said that in any census first houses get counted, unfortunately house count is based on flawed system. He also pointed out that after the 18th Amendment the powers are gone to provincial chief ministers however there is a dire need of devolving those powers down to district and union council levels.

Senator Anwar Kakar from Balochistan said that holding elections in two provinces would trigger another crisis. He said we have two options one is holding elections as per the rule and the other is managing the crises. He emphasized that the management of the crisis is the critical need of the time.