ISLAMABAD: Minister for Law and Justice Azam Nazeer Tarar on Friday rejected the claims that the government is taking the right of vote from overseas Pakistanis.
Addressing a press conference flanked by Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Faisal Karim Kundi and Senator Kamran Murtaza, Tarar said that overseas Pakistanis are a precious asset of the country and we cannot deprive them of their right to vote.
“The government has neither deprived overseas Pakistanis from their right of vote nor it is the policy of the present government to do so,” he said, adding that the present government wanted to give representation to overseas Pakistan in the National Assembly and the Senate.
He said that the main objective of recent legislation is only to enable the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to devise a strategy to ensure the right to vote for overseas Pakistanis in a transparent manner.
The minister said that it was the prerogative of the ECP to hold the elections and formulate its modalities but the PTI government had bulldozed this said bill as well as the EVM bill from the National Assembly in 2021.
The standing committee on parliamentary affairs had rejected the bill with a majority in the past and left this decision over ECP, he said.
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Tarar said that the ECP required sufficient time to prepare as EVMs required extensive training of staff as well as voters. “We also need to see utility issues such as the internet as well as electricity in remote areas before moving to machine elections,” he maintained.
“ECP has told the government that the commission can hold machine elections in phases,” he said. He further said that the coalition government has asked Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)chairman Imran Khan for deliberations on electoral reforms but he did not respond to letters asking to nominate representatives in the Senate and the National Assembly.
The law minister said that, according to the ECP, many countries in the Middle East, where millions of overseas Pakistanis reside, have refused in writing to make arrangements for electronic voting.
About amendment in the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999, he said that the NAO 1999 had been introduced by a dictator. The NAB laws had been used for political victimisation and changing loyalties, he said.
He said that all the amendments made in the bill were in line with various orders and directions of the courts. In NAO 1999, the right of bail had not been provided which is against fundamental rights, he said, adding that in our country in criminal cases only physical remand of 14 days could be given while under the NAO 1999, 90-day remand is allowed for an accused of white-collar crime.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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