The Lahore High Court has ordered the Election Commission of Pakistan to give the date of the general elections in Punjab. The same had been demanding by Chairman PTI Imran Khan and his party leaders on various media platforms for the past few months.
When a petition comes under consideration in the court, the court must pronounce its decision and the decision regarding the date for the general elections can also be considered as a link in the same chain.
The duty of the court is to interpret the constitution and the country’s constitution is clear that in the situation of Punjab, it is the responsibility of the Election Commission and the caretaker government to hold elections within 90 days. According to the constitution, caretaker government cannot remain in any province of the country for more than 3 months. However, all the institutions and machinery of the country that are related to the general elections, have said that they do not have the manpower and resources to conduct the elections.
Keeping all the indications in mind, it is understood that the court has its own mechanism to implement the judgment given by it. The Election Commission, which conducts the elections, conducts the same using all the means of the government. But if the Election Commission is crippled by eliminating those means and resources, let alone holding the election, it will become difficult for the Election Commission to run its own arrangements.
If the court interprets the constitution that Governor Punjab Baligh-ur- Rehman has to announce the date of elections, then the governor will have to give the date of election. However, the court ended the dispute that the governor of Punjab should or should not give the date of the election, instead, he assigned the task to the Election Commission to conduct the election. The other side of this is that the concerned institutions such as the police, Ministry of Finance, Rangers or other institutions say that in these situations when terrorism is increasing and our deployments have been made in other places, then we do not have enough force to provide security the elections.
Due to security reasons, even if the Election Commission gives a date for conducting the elections, other stakeholders will have to approach the court. Then the court will notice and summon all the relevant authorities and then the court will ask why they don’t have the means to help election commission to conduct elections. And the court will also urge the institutions or ministries to provide resources to ECP. Because there have been elections before in Pakistan. All over the world, elections are held in times even during war and hardship, and elections are held in emergency situations, so why can’t it be held in Pakistan? If these matters are prolonged and if the elections are not held on time, My personal opinion is that it will not make a good example and chaos will continue in the country.
In the current situation, it has become very difficult for the ruling political party PML-N to restore its reputation. On the one hand, there are internal cracks in the party along with the worsening situation of the economy and the worst inflation.
There is no democracy in the political parties of Pakistan. How can the parties which do not have democracy themselves, enlighten the country with democratic values? Due to inherent politics, politics has become a business in Pakistan for the last several decades. For such big parties, politics is the source of business. The present and the previous governments also gave relief to themselves only , the people did not get any relief from them.
In the present era and even earlier powerful people have made amendments in the NAB law for their relief. The rulers gave relief to themselves, but they also had to pay a political price. When Imran Khan was in the government, his popularity graph was falling, but when he left the government, the poor performance of the PDM parties opened up the entire pool of his competence, which increased the popularity of Imran Khan among the people again.
The government is continuously benefiting a certain class of people. If Nawaz Sharif comes to the country, he can help in managing some of the problems, but the platform for his arrival is not being built.
No party is ready to conduct its own audit. Even in Imran Khan’s party, the single-man show continued, and hardly anyone else in the party dared to speak. Maryam Nawaz is a privileged person who was born with a golden spoon in her mouth, her father Nawaz Sharif was the former Prime Minister, she will continue to take advantage of it.
All the political parties think that there is a wealth of money in the country which they will keep looting and the wheel of the economy will continue like this, but this is not the reality and it can cause a huge disaster.
In fact, if our foreign debt and internal debt are converted into dollars, the total debt reaches 267 billion, and for their payments and interest, about 25 billion dollars are needed every year. No one knows where they will come from.
Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves are less than 2.9 billion dollars, which is insufficient even for 15 days of imports. The IMF also left saying that they will talk to their administration.
The current government will have to implement very strict conditions from the IMF. At this time, a large number of people have come to the streets. This is the era of oppression and cruelty. Starvation has begun. People are committing suicide. They have also started protest and yesterday protest demonstrations were held at mort than 15 places.
The betterment lies in the fact that the government should implement economic reforms, but taking sufficient measures for the relief of the people has become the need of the hour and if all this cannot be done, then the current government and the Election Commission should give a date for the general elections and give a chance to a government that has solutions to people’s problems.
Translated by M.M. News Editorial Team
