ISLAMABAD: Political rivals in the National Assembly overcame on Thursday divisions over budget and other issues to jointly authorise the house speaker to name an all-party parliamentary committee to recommend electoral reforms to remove “shortcomings in previous elections”.
The move, following consultations behind the scenes for days, came at the end of a day that saw an otherwise smooth approval of all the government demands for grants in the new budget tarnished by the conduct of a junior minister, who had to be led out of the house by his colleagues to prevent him from having a physical clash with one or more opposition lawmakers.
The authorisation for an electoral reforms committee was a follow-up of a June 10 letter Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had written to Speaker Ayaz Sadiq to constitute, with the house’s approval, a committee tasked “to evaluate shortcomings of previous elections” and recommend reforms to “ensure that elections are held in a free, fair and transparent manner”.
The move comes amid a continuing agitation by the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, the second largest opposition party in the National Assembly, against what it calls large-scale rigging in 2013 general elections and threatened protests by the Pakistan Awami Tehreek of the Canada-based religious scholar Allama Tahirul Qadri against the present system as a whole. INTERNEWS
