ISLAMABAD: Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry on Tuesday expressed surprise after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced to delay electoral reforms aimed at ensuring transparency in the Senate elections until 2024.
In a statement issued late Monday night, the election commission said that the Senate elections scheduled for March 3 will be conducted “as per past practice” as there is insufficient time to implement any of the suggestions provided by the Supreme Court (SC) in its ruling.
In a Twitter post, the minister said that the commission has acknowledged the importance of the latest technology to prevent the practice of horse-trading in the Senate elections. But he was astonished the regulator had decided to delay these reforms until the next elections.
الیکشن کمیشن نے سینٹ کے انتخابات میں ووٹوں کی خرید وفروخت اور کرپشن روکنے کیلئے ٹیکنالوجی استعمال کرنےکی اہمیت کو تسلیم کیا ہے لیکن حیران کن طور پر وہ ان اصلاحات کو اگلے انتخابات کیلئے مؤخر کر رہے ہیں، سپریم کورٹ کا فیصلہ بہرحال مختلف رائے دیتا ہے ہمارے لئے دونوں ادارے محترم ہیں
— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) March 2, 2021
The decision of the apex court gives a different opinion, but both the institutions are respectable to us, he said.
Fawad said the opposition parties were spending their energies in the Senate elections […] which is already a lost cause for them.
He said that the PDM parties’ cries will start after 24 hours and […] they will create a new story to keep the television screens alive, adding that the immature politics of the opposition is arranged on a daily basis because they do neither have a strategy nor policy.
