LAHORE: A day after Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan called on the premier to hold early elections, the Jamaat-e-Islami and Pakistan People’s Party asserted that the government should be allowed to complete its tenure. PPP Secretary General Nayyar Hussain Bukhari said the PPP desired that assemblies should complete their term. Bukhari said Kaptaan lacks political maturity. It is the prerogative of leader of the House to ask for dissolution of assembly and after the 18th amendment, every assembly is sovereign entity and the chief ministers have the right to ask for dissolution of their respective assemblies if they feel the necessity for it. He said democracy is because of sacrifices of PPP leadership and workers. PTI and its leaders had no feeling for democracy and it was Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Khurshid Shah who brought back PTI members to parliament. PTI lawmakers only received their monthly wages and did nothing for the people of their constituency because Imran Khan kept them busy on container. Imran Khan also miserably failed to serve the people of his constituency, he concluded. Meanwhile, JI chief Senator Sirajul Haq said the bill passed by the ruling party allowing a disqualified person to hold party office was in conflict with the constitution and an attempt to bulldoze the Supreme Court judgment in the Panama leaks case. Talking to the media after a meeting of the JI central executive at Mansoora, he called upon the government to withdraw the controversial bill which also negated the electoral laws. He said that a person not fulfilling conditions laid down under articles 62 and 63 of the constitution could not be head of a political party. In reply to a question, the JI chief said that early elections could be held with the consensus of all political parties. However, he said, that instead of allowing the ruling part y to become a political martyr by calling early elections, it would be better to let the assemblies complete their term so that the governments’ performance was before the electorate. He further said that only a few months were left for the completion of the term of the government. Siraj said that the government itself had made the electoral reforms suggested by the Parliamentary Committee controversial by permitting a disqualified person to lead the party as this was violation of the fundamentals of the constitution and this would bring the entire electoral system in dispute and bring bad name to the country. He said that the electoral reforms suggested by the JI had not been considered at all. He said that in a democratic set up, the judgments of the courts were fully respected. However, he said that the ruling party had been distributing sweets on judgments which it thought were in its favour but began protest when the court decision was against its wishes. He said that this attitude was not democratic. Published in Daily Times, September 26th 2017.