"Article 218 Kehta Hai Election Commission Mulk Mein Shafaaf Intikhabaat Karaye," Legal Expert Hafiz Ahsan Ahmed
"Article 218 Kehta Hai Election Commission Mulk Mein Shafaaf Intikhabaat Karaye," Legal Expert Hafiz Ahsan Ahmed
Transcript
00:00 the people's party. So, I'm going to introduce our guest to you. So, Sadaqat Ali Abbasi,
00:07 a senator, Kamran Murtaza, JUI. We will have Faisal Kareem Kundi, who will be representing
00:14 the people's party. And first of all, we will have a discussion with Hafiz Ahsan Ahmad,
00:21 a lawyer, who is a lawyer. Thank you very much, Mr. Hafiz, for being with us. Please tell us,
00:30 this is a tricky situation. I was mentioning in the beginning that we have always heard
00:35 about the constitution and the law. We have read them in one sentence. Here, the constitution
00:40 says that elections should be held on the 9th day, because the assembly was first discussed.
00:45 The law that the previous government passed, according to that, the elections are necessary
00:50 after the census, before elections, and it takes four months for that. So, where should
00:55 we look? Thank you very much. The thing is that what is being discussed right now is
01:04 Article 224, which says that if the assembly completes its national tenure, then it is
01:11 in Sarsingh, and if the assembly is dissolved, then elections should be held on the 9th day.
01:18 This is what Article 224 says, and this is the constitution of Pakistan. But when we
01:23 go into the whole scenario of the general election, then this article alone is not enough.
01:28 For this, four articles are very important, which conduct all these elections. One article
01:34 is Article 51, and all its articles are five. One article is Article 153 of the constitution,
01:40 and the third article is Article 218 of the constitution. Article 218 of the constitution
01:45 says that it is the job of the Election Commission to hold free, fair and transparent elections
01:50 in this country, and all the practices that can compromise or restrict elections, should
01:55 be taken into account, so that a free, fair and absolutely transparent election is held
02:00 and the representatives of the country become those whom the people of the country know
02:05 and trust. But, brother Sati, the important thing for that is that it is written in the
02:10 constitution that the election will be held at a time when your census will be based on
02:15 it, and that is why your assembly seats have been fixed. Now, all these things are being
02:20 started from Article 51, in which it is said that how many seats will be there in each
02:25 province, Punjab, KPK, Sarhat, Balochistan and how many seats will be there in the federal
02:30 capital. Then we have made amendments and made FATA a part of Pakistan, so first it
02:35 was separate from FATA, now it has been merged into KPK. In that same Article, Article 5,
02:40 it is said that your general election will be held in the month of June, and the general
02:45 election will be based on the last census which has been notified, which is Article 5.
02:50 Now, Article 5 is invoked through Article 153 of the constitution, because since your
02:55 18th amendment has come and things have been devolved, the census has now become the subject
03:00 of the Council of Common Interest. That is why you must have seen that when elections
03:05 were held in 2017, the census was not devolved, it was devolved in the month of June.
03:10 So, the last census was the last census of the Council of Common Interest. That is why
03:15 you must have seen that when elections were held in 2017, they were held in the old 18th
03:20 amendment, so they were on the old census, and in which all the political parties showed
03:25 great concerns, so the PTI government decided in the CCI that we will go on its digital
03:30 census, and that digital census continued, and the last government, it was, it was, you
03:35 can see that the digital census has also raised objections.
03:40 No, they will come, they will come, as long as Satibai does not fix the National Finance
03:45 Commission in this country, and does not seat provincial and national assemblies, this
03:50 is a war of power, it will continue, and it should be addressed, today if you do NFC,
03:55 then in which country in the world do you say that 60 lakh or 70 lakh people are not
04:00 going to vote? So, the last census was the last census of the Council of Common Interest,
04:05 and in which, in the last census, the Council of Common Interest is in the third place,
04:10 which is chaired by the Prime Minister, there are four Chief Ministers, and three Federal
04:15 Ministers are members of that. They made a decision, and they made a decision, and this
04:20 is the first time in the history of Pakistan, that all the CCI's used to make such decisions,
04:25 and used to make limitations on the constituencies, and we used to go to the elections.
04:30 Now what happened is that they made a decision, and they made the decision two days before
04:35 it went, and one day before, when you notified it, then came Article 51(5) of the Constitution,
04:40 which says that when you notify your census, then after that, the elections will come under
04:45 it. Now when Article 55 is read, then the Article 224, which we are talking about, of
04:50 90 days, Article 51(5) overrides that, that when you fulfil the requirement of Article
04:57 51(5), that you will go under the limitations, then the period under Article 224 starts.
05:03 Now, the Election Commission has done two things, and one thing they are saying is that the
05:09 Election Commission does not announce a schedule, so Satibhai, there can't be two schedule
05:14 issues, that you see that there can be limitations, that one block should go somewhere, the Congress
05:19 does not know what can happen to your constituencies, in some districts it will be less, in some
05:24 it will be more, so in that it is that you announce the election schedule and in that
05:29 you say that you should take the nomination papers and then do the scrutiny, so simultaneously
05:34 these things cannot run, it is not even constitutional and legally possible.
05:38 That is why the Election Commission of Pakistan has done what it has done under Article 51,
05:43 and under that Section 17 comes, which you have mentioned, that in Section 17 it is
05:49 that it should come within 120 days, so what the Election Commission of Pakistan has done
05:53 is constitutional, there is no illegality in it, and the schedule they have given, in which
06:00 it is 120 days and it will be completed on 14th December, after that 90 days will be
06:05 notified, that the constitutional limitations are there, then after that the 90 days period
06:11 will start.
06:14 After that the 90 days period will come, when the requirements of Article 51.5 will be
06:18 fulfilled, so the constitutional...
06:20 That means these 4 months before and after that 90 days are different.
06:25 That is why it will come, because first you have to fulfill the requirements of Article
06:29 51.5 that you have to do the limitations and its schedule is there.
06:33 After that the 90 days...
06:35 Thank you so much Hafiz Ahsan for being with us, you tried to explain us, but this matter
06:42 is not that simple, it is getting complicated like a jalebi, and then 4 months this and
06:47 then 3 months that, Kamran Murtaza, you are also a law expert, so please shed some light
06:54 that is it the same way as Ahsan Sahib tried to explain us?
07:03 Hafiz Sahib is a very good lawyer, he explained us perfectly, the political aspect of this is
07:10 that the census that has been notified, we are not accepting it, we are opposing it.
07:17 We are opposing it on two things, one thing that we are opposing is that when you give
07:23 a date for your desolation, then after that there is no moral justification that you
07:30 notify the new census, and that has its own consequence.
07:37 And the second thing that we are opposing is that you notified the census, the report,
07:48 but in this report you reduced the population of 64 lakhs to the Balochistan province, and
07:55 you divided it here and there, so if we had to notify the census, then our census would
08:02 increase by 6-8 seats, of the National Assembly, which has been unfair, and they did that.
08:09 But for what reason was that done?
08:11 This is because the matter has become subjudice, it has been challenged, I don't know, I am
08:18 a person who has hope, I don't think there should be any malice in this, but anyway,
08:25 as I am a political worker, I raise my political concerns and should do so, and the day it
08:33 happened, we raised the issue in the Senate of Pakistan, this issue was raised by us,
08:42 that whatever you have done is injustice, and the answer you gave was...
08:47 You said that morally this is not right.
08:52 Morally and legally it is not right, legally it is not right, you are listening to my voice?
09:06 Yes, legally it is not right, because you are going to take such a big decision, and there
09:13 are two caretakers sitting there, two people were caretakers, one of them had reached with
09:20 great difficulty, due to a delay, you give all the grace marks to him, our Balochistan
09:27 CM had reached very late, we don't say that he was forced to come, but he had reached
09:33 very late, so all these things together, the new census is being disputed, but here, the
09:42 government, our government, after announcing its desolation, that in a way, the census
09:49 will be dissolved, and it takes such a big decision, so there is a question mark on it
09:55 as well. Now, the consequences are coming up, they said that delimitation will be done,
10:02 delimitation will be done, delimitation is definitely according to the law, but suppose
10:09 that all this is necessary, then for a long time, we were running the system on ordinances
10:16 from the government of Shahbaz Saleef Sahib, in the first government, so when we were running
10:23 the system on ordinances in that time, then good faith ordinances can also come here,
10:29 on the objections, suppose, 30 days, like Afid Sahib was telling you, that for such
10:36 a task, such a task, we need such a time, so we put a sunset class, for this election,
10:46 for the coming election, for the forthcoming election, we cannot reduce the duration of
10:53 it, we will reduce it, this is the job of the supervisors, the job of the supervisors in
10:58 the election commission is this, we will assist them, we will reduce the duration of it.
11:02 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]