Caretaker govt has no power to delay elections: Solangi

Islamabad: Caretaker Minister for Information, Broadcasting and Parliamentary Affairs Murtaza Solangi on Friday said that the caretaker government had no power to delay the general elections scheduled for February 8. Speaking in the talk show of a private news channel, the minister said under Article 218(3) of the Constitution, the power to fix or change the date of elections solely rested with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

No body including the administration had any right to change the date of elections, he added. The minister reiterated the caretaker government’s stance of holding the general elections on February 8.

Whatever he stated in the Senate while speaking on the resolution for delaying the election was the government’s stance, he added. “Whatever mentioned in the resolution is factually correct since there are security issues in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

If this resolution is called a conspiracy then the onus to thwart it is on those who are making complaints,” the minister said, adding it was also the responsibility of the parties in the House to point out the quorum. To a query, he ruled out any possibility of writing an article by a jailed person for any media outlet as no such content had been leaked from the prison.

The government would, however, take up the issue of “ghost article”, published in the name of a jailed politician, with the foreign media outlet, The Economist, he added. He asked whether The Economist had ever published such ghost articles by jailed politicians from any other part of the world.

 Solangi said there was substantial evidence against those responsible for the events of May 9, 2023 when the civil and military installations came under attack following the arrest of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder.

 “The people of Pakistan fully know that who actually conspired (against the country) and who was the target of that conspiracy,” he added. He said no court had declared the caretaker government as unconstitutional and a person who was in the jail had not authority to pass a judgment on the caretaker set-up. Solangi said the anti-money laundering regime of Pakistan had witnessed substantial improvement in the recent past.

He hoped that the Financial Action Task Force would apply the same rule on all other countries which was applied on Pakistan. “Pakistan is an independent country, practicing democracy in letter and spirit and criticism is a part of democracy,” he remarked in response to another question. He said if anybody had any complaint regarding the elections, they could reach out the relevant forum for redressal of their grievances.

To another query, he said many PTI candidates, whose nominations papers were rejected in the first stage, got relief from the tribunals. The PTI submitted some 2,620 nomination papers for the National Assembly, out of which 1,996 were accepted, he added.

 For the provincial assemblies, he said the PTI submitted 1,777 nomination papers, and 1,398 were accepted. Some 78.67 per cent of the nomination papers were accepted at the first stage, he added.