Govt seriously considering amending election laws: Azam Nazeer Tarar

• Law minister calls for suitable environment for polls. 
• PPP Senator Taj Haider says census and delimitations key ingredients for free and fair elections.
• Senator Anwar Kakar says holding elections in two provinces would trigger another crisis.

ISLAMABAD: Federal Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar revealed that the government is seriously considering amending the election laws for the sake of transparent elections in the country, reported The News on Wednesday.

“We are seriously thinking and carefully examining that at least those amendments should be included which already have the consensus,” said Tarar while addressing a stakeholder’s conference on electoral transparency jointly hosted by the Centre 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-Pakistan’s (MQM-P) Mustafa Kamal, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Taj Haider, Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) Senator Anwar Kakar, Fredrick Neumann’s Birgit Lamm, PILDAT’s Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, CPDI’s Mukhtar Ahmed Ali and others.

The law minister said that holding elections was very important but there was also a need to see the environment. 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 Haider 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.

MQM’s Kamal said that his party boycotted the local government elections in Karachi due to a lack of transparent census.

While talking about delimitations, he said that there are serious flaws in the delimitations in Karachi as some union councils have 20,000 voters while some have 90,000 voters. He said that in any census, houses are counted first and unfortunately, the house count is based on a flawed system.

He also pointed out that after the 18th Amendment, the powers are devolved to provincial chief ministers however there is a dire need to further devolve those powers down to district and union council levels.

Senator Kakar was of the view 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 emphasised that the management of the crisis is a critical need of the time.