If ECP members resign,PTI won’t have major role in appointing new ones

ISLAMABAD: Even if the members of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) prematurely resign nine months before expiry of their 5-year constitutional term, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) will have no overriding role under the Constitution in the appointment of their successors.
Only Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and leader of opposition in the National Assembly Khurshid Shah, the two consultees, are armed with the powers to pick up the ECP members with the exclusion of any other parliamentary or political player as mandated by the Constitution.
The incumbent ECP members - Justice (R) Fazalur Rehman (Balochistan), Justice (R) Shahzad Akbar (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Justice (R) Riaz Kayani (Punjab) and Justice (R) Roshan Essani (Sindh) - all retired high court judges, were nominated on June 10, 2011 and will retire on the same day in 2016.
The then Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, had consulted with the then opposition leader and now Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, to select these members. The bipartisan parliamentary committee (PC) had duly approved them.
Although the PTI has no constitutional role in these nominations, it is widely believed that Nawaz Sharif and Khurshid Shah will informally take the PTI and other parliamentary parties into confidence on the fresh appointments in case the present ECP members bow out due to the pressure being exerted by the PTI.
The electoral reforms committee is also considering, among several other changes, altering the procedure of picking up the ECP members. Even if the posts created by the resignations of the present ECP members are quickly filled, a considerable time would be required to complete the exercise given the complex, inflexible attitudes of some political parties. However, it is not immediately clear what kind of constitutional lacuna would be created if the nominations are not made during the forthcoming high profile by-elections as well as local council polls in the next few months.
Article 218 of the Constitution says for the purpose of election to the National Assembly, Senate and provincial assemblies and for election to such other public offices as may be specified by law, a permanent ECP shall be constituted in accordance with this provision. The ECP shall consist of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), who shall be Chairman of the ECP; and four ECP members. It shall be the duty of the ECP to organise and conduct the election and to make such arrangements as are necessary to ensure that the polls are conducted honestly, justly, fairly and in accordance with law, and that corrupt practices are guarded against.
If the new ECP members are not notified and the by-election and local polls are held in their absence, they may be challenged in a superior court where it may be argued that the ECP being incomplete under Article 218 can’t conduct these electoral exercises and hence the process is void.
In case the prime minister and the opposition leader fail to reach a consensus on the new ECP members, they will forward their recommendations to the PC for decision.
The PC to be constituted by the speaker (the deputy speaker will be the acting speaker in the absence of the speaker) will comprise 50pc members from the treasury benches and 50pc from the opposition parties, based on their strength in parliament, to be nominated by the respective parliamentary leaders.
The total strength of the PC will be 12 members out of which one-third will be from the Senate.
The procedure for the appointment of the CEC and ECP members is the same meaning the prime minister and opposition are the only two constitutional consultees.
Although the prime minister and opposition leader will hold consultations with the PTI and other parliamentary players to evolve a consensus on the new appointments, the problem with Imran Khan is that he may repeat what he had done in the case of Fakhruddin G Ebrahim. He had extolled him when his opinion had been sought by the then two consultees, but later he had attacked him hook, line, and sinker, leaving no option for the highly respected figure to stay in office.
Despite the likely consultations with the PTI if vacancies occur, the prime minister and the opposition leader will not give it a dominant say in these appointments.
In spite of the severe campaign over the past two years by the PTI against the ECP members, they have firmly stood ground and refused to leave although it is not certainly known what decision they will take on Monday. But a week back, the entire ECP including the CEC had in a meeting forcefully spurned Imran Khan’s allegations as inconsequential while responding to his letter demanding action against the ECP officials, who, in his view, were held responsible by the judicial commission for committing irregularities in the 2013 general elections.
In an institutional response, the ECP had dismissed his missive as unworthy of a detailed reaction and opined that the PTI is no position to seek an explanation from it or dictate terms to it.