ISLAMABAD: The Caretaker Federal Minister for Information, Broadcasting, National History and Literary Heritage Barrister Syed Ali Zafar on Wednesday said that the caretaker government would adopt effective measures to ensure free, fair, transparent and peaceful General Election 2018.
In an interview with Pakistan Television, he said that there were a few concerns that elections would be delayed over election forms, delimitation of constituencies and issues pertaining to FATA reforms. However, the elections would not be delayed over such issues because they would be settled. Zafar said that the Supreme Court of Pakistan resolved to add affidavit to the nomination forms and solved the issue to eradicate objection of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) as well as the candidates.
He added that delimitation of constituencies was necessary as the constituencies should be compact and ‘not in the shape of islands’
“There were a few errors in the delimitation of constituencies which needed to be rectified to secure the right of voters,” he maintained. He stressed that the caretaker government would facilitate the ECP while performing its tasks for elections.
“According to the Constitution, the elections should be held within 60 days. Hence, the caretaker government aims to resolve short-term issues only and cannot take permanent decisions,” he added. Regarding security during election campaigns, he said that armed forces and other law enforcement agencies would fulfill their responsibilities accordingly with the constitution of Pakistan.
“All political parties would be allocated equal playing fields to run their campaigns,” he said while emphasising on the Article 19 of the Constitution that reserves fundamental right of freedom of expression for the general public and political parties. However, nobody can issue statement against army, judiciary or behave indecently and immorally. Zafar outlined that power outages has been a critical issue, and so information acquired from the Ministry of Water and Power would be revealed to the general public. Furthermore, he added that the Cabinet discussed the issue of economy in detail and said “Our economy has a lot of potential and we can go a long way”.
The minister claimed that judgment about ‘fair polls’ would be made after the general election is over. He claimed that the government aims to address the criticism against it for improvement and performing appropriately.
Published in Daily Times, June 7th 2018.
