• Terms govt move to hike number of UCs ‘malafide action’
• Says passage of amended bill will further delay elections

ISLAMABAD: Legal and political wrangling on the local bodies elections in the federal capital continued on Sunday as President Arif Alvi refused to sign the bill to increase the number of union councils (UCs).

The bill was passed by the National Assembly and the Senate after the cabinet decided to increase the number of UCs from 101 to 125, ten days before the elections, leading to their postponement.

“President Dr Arif Alvi has returned unsigned the Islamabad Capital Territory Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2022 in terms of clause (1)(b) of Article 75 of the Constitution,” the presidency said on Twitter.

Mr Alvi returned the bill observing it would further delay the local government elections.

“Actions of the Federal Government taken in [a] hurry resulted in delaying [the] election process twice, which was anathema to democracy,” the presidency said, describing the federal government’s actions as “malafide”.

“After completion of delimitation of 50 Union Councils, Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced elections of Local Government in [Islamabad] on 31st July 2022,” the presidency quoted the president as saying.

He added the schedule was announced when the federal government increased the number of UCs from 50 to 101, thus putting off the elections.

Section 2 of the current bill has increased the number of UCs to 125, and the amendment resulted in the postponement of polls that were scheduled for Dec 31, Mr Alvi added.

The bill was sent to the president after it was passed by the two houses of parliament — the National Assembly and the Senate.

It is believed that the president’s stance would weaken the government’s defence when its intra-court appeal would be taken up by an Islamabad High Court (IHC) bench on Monday (today).

Legal challenges

The IHC had, on Dec 30, ordered the ECP to hold the polls on Dec 31 as per the schedule, giving the machinery less than 24 hours to implement its directions.

The single member-bench of Justice Arbab Muhammad Tahir passed the order on the petitions of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Jamaat-i-Islami (JI).

However, the decision could not be implemented as no polling staff was deployed, while the ballot papers and other material couldn’t be transported to polling stations on such short notice, an ECP official had told Dawn.

Later, the federal government challenged the IHC’s “hasty” decision, and the ECP explained in writing to the court reasons for its inability to hold the polls. The opposition PTI, meanwhile, sought contempt proceedings against both — the government and the election watchdog.

In its appeal, the federal government stated that the court “has proceeded in haste to pass the impugned order…as writ petitions [of PTI and JI] were instituted on Dec 28 and were taken up for hearing…the same day and [court] issued notices to the Respondents for Dec 29 for taking up at 2:30pm”.

According to the appeal, the government was not given adequate time to file a written reply to these petitions and the court announced its judgement.

It further said that the judge treated the ECP as an executive body and directed the commission to hold elections. The ECP, it pointed out, is a constitutional forum.

Earlier, in its detailed verdict, the IHC noted that ECP had issued the election schedule on Oct 20. Thereafter all the process required for the conduct of the election was completed by the ECP. The polling day, as per the schedule, was Dec 31.

“The Federal Government was aware of the schedule, however, at fag end, issued the notification dated Dec 19, based on unconfirmed statistics/information provided by the Administrator Municipal Corporation of Islamabad (MCI), in haste without realising that elections are going to be held after twelve days.”

At odds

This is not the first President Alvi found himself at odds with the legislation passed by the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM)-led government, since it came to power in April 2022.

In June last year, he refused to assent to a bill seeking to reverse the ‘controversial’ changes made to election laws by the previous PTI-led government to use electronic voting machines and i-voting for overseas Pakistanis.

The president called the amendments “regressive” in nature.

The president did the same with another piece of legislation seeking to clip the vast powers of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

According to a statement issued by the presidency, Dr Alvi said the law would “promote corruption by ensuring that the long arm of the law is crippled”.

“The president lamented that the small man will be caught for petty crimes while the corrupt rich will remain free to continue with their blood-sucking abhorrent practices. Having weak accountability is against the basic rights of the people of Pakistan [...] it is also against the fundamentals of our Constitution,” the statement quoted the president as saying.

However, despite the president’s refusal, the two bills became law as the government got them passed in a joint sitting of parliament.

Procedurally, after bills are passed by the joint sitting, they are presented to the president once again for his assent. If the president does not give his approval within 10 days, it will be deemed to have been given.

However, the palpable confrontation between the presidency and the government appeared seemed to have eased as Mr Alvi recently attempted to ameliorate political tensions by bringing both the PTI and the ruling coalition to the table. However, his efforts failed to yield any substantial results as the PTI and government leaders continued to point their guns at each other.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2023