EDITORIAL: Deliberately resorting to obfuscation, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has amply demonstrated that maintaining constitutional propriety is the least of its considerations.
It may be recalled that after the electoral body had failed to hold elections to the dissolved Punjab assembly within the constitutionally stipulated 90-day period, the PTI had approached courts, and it is April 4 verdict through which the Supreme Court had fixed May 14 as the election date, with the warning that its ruling stays in the field and there would be consequences for violation.
Yet the ECP remained unmoved, deriving strength from the then PDM (Pakistan Democratic Movement) coalition government’s refusal to extend the required cooperation on transparently untenable grounds.
Following multiple hearings, a three-member Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial, delivered its verdict on Thursday, rejecting the ECP’s plea that giving the election date and changing the polls schedule was its sole prerogative under Section 58 of the (amended) Election Act 2017.
It was clear to even to people unfamiliar with legal intricacies that the ECP was fighting a losing battle. As for its counsel’s contention that it was unable to conduct election within 90 days of the dissolution of the assembly, Justice Munib Akhtar pointed out that in that case it could have sought the court’s intervention by filing a fresh petition.
Since the governor did not act on the chief minister’s advice for the assembly’s dismissal, the ECP could give the polling date but not arbitrarily decide to push the date beyond the 90-day limit. More to the point, as Justice Ijazul Ahsan observed, the Constitution is not anyone’s turf and nobody could go beyond it, adding that the ECP “cannot override a clear provision of the Constitution. ” The learned bench also reminded the ECP’s counsel that new points could not be raised in a review petition, therefore, he should identify from the record any errors in the order for which a review was sought.
The ECP in its petition had also contended that the Supreme Court can interpret the law (as per the Constitution), which is what the court has done, but not rewrite it. Nor can Parliament do that with a simple law rather than an amendment to the Constitution.
As the court aptly said in the judgement, “it was not for the ECP to (metaphorically) wring its hands and then bow under the weight of its own professed inability to persuade or cajole the executive authority to obey the constitutional command of Article 220 and pass an unconstitutional order of pushing forward the election by several months.”
Nevertheless, the verdict makes no mention of the ‘consequences’ the apex court had warned of in its April 4 ruling. But the PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) is unwilling to let it pass.
The party has decided to move a contempt application against the ECP, claiming that the dismissal of the review petition is a “charge sheet” against the commission. Whatever the fate of this petition, it can be hoped the judgement will impel the electoral body to stop dithering and do its duty to hold fair, free and timely elections to all assemblies.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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