Federal Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar has said that the government is seriously considering to amend the election laws for ensuring the transparent elections in the country.

ISLAMABAD : Imrana komal

Federal Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar has said that the

government is seriously considering to amend the election laws for

ensuring the transparent elections in the country.

“We are seriously thinking and carefully examining that at least those

amendments should be included which already have the consensus,” said

Azam Nazir Tarar Federal Law Minister while addressing a stakeholder’s

conference electoral transparency jointly hosted by Center for Peace

and Development Initiatives (CPDI) and Fredrick Naumann Foundation.

The conference was attended by Muttahida Qaum Movement’s (MQM) Mustafa

Kamal, Taj Haider of Pakistan People’s party, Balochistan Awami Party

(BAP) Senator Anwar Kakar , Fredrick Neumann’s Birgit Lamm , PILDAT’s

Ahmed Bilal Mehboob , CPDI’s Mukhtar Ahmed Ali and others.

Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar said that elections are very important

but we need to see the environment too. He said that unfortunately

successive governments did not give importance to the local government

elections which are key for democracy and democratic process. He said

we need to change our attitude towards this.

Senator Taj Haider of PPP 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.

Mustafa Kamal , a senior leader of MQM while addressing the conference

said that his party boycotted the latest  local government elections

in Karachi one of the key reason was the latest census which was not

being carried out transparently. While talking about delimitations he

said that there are serious flaws in the delimitations in Karachi too

as there are union councils where you have 20 thousand voters and

there are union councils where there are 90,000 votes are registered.

He said that in any census first houses get counted, unfortunately

house count is based on flawed system. He also pointed out that after

the 18th amendment the powers are gone to provincial chief ministers

however there is a dire need of devolving those powers down to

district and union council levels. He said that there is a dire need

that all the political stakeholders should sit together to resolve the

issues if they did not then others would come and fill the vacuum.

Senator Anwar Kakar from Balochistan said that if we are going to hold

elections in two provinces we are going to have another crisis. He

said we have two options one is holding elections as per the rule and

the other is managing crisis. He emphasized that management of crisis

is the dire need of the time.

Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf leader Ali Nawaz Awan while addressing the

participants of the conference said that PTI government wanted to

bring transparency in the electoral process by introducing electronic

voting machine but this government has stopped it. Ahmed Bilal Mehboob

from Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development (PILDAT) said that

one party has already announced their distrust over the chief election

commissioner. He feared that this stance will be damaging the

credibility of elections.

Birgit Lamm in her address said that elections and clean election processes are the back bone of democracy. She said that currently it’s a crisis situation in the country for continuing peaceful development of in this part of the world fair elections are very important. She said that in absence of clean election processes no one would accept the election results this would lead to more cases in the courts. She said that there should not be a debate whether we have money or not for elections. It’s a priority.