Daily Times

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on Wednesday said it had decided to file a reference against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja in the Supreme Judicial Council, a private TV channel reported. The announcement was made by former information minister Fawad Chaudhry, who said that Pakistan’s “biggest political party had lost trust in him [CEC]”. Chaudhry, who was speaking to the media outside the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) alongside PTI leader Faisal Vawda, said the “biggest reason behind the political crisis that Pakistan is facing today is the election commission being non-functional as an institution”. He said it was institutions’ job to “maintain a balance in the country … and they fail to do so because appointments in them are not based on merit”. Chaudhry said PTI chief Imran Khan had suggested that the “CEC may take up a position in the PML-N”, implying that Raja had been biased against the PTI and favoured the ruling party.

“When the country’s biggest leadership, the biggest party loses trust in you, the respectable option is to resign, acknowledging that … you cannot continue working if the leadership does not trust you and suggesting that a new person is appointed in your place. But unfortunately, what happened was contrary to this,” he regretted. “And this incomplete election commission – which lacks members from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and as a result, is not representing around 70 per cent population of Pakistan – is a party against the country’s biggest political leadership,” he added. In such a scenario, Chaudhry continued, the way forward for the PTI was to continue its political struggle alongside starting a “legal struggle”. Therefore, he said, the party planned to file a reference against the CEC in the Supreme Judicial Council. “Because no CEC would run his office the way [this] CEC ran his office.”