ISLAMABAD: Mystery continues to surround the verdict announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Friday\u00a0disqualifying\u00a0Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan for making false declarations.<\/p>\n
Announcing the verdict in the absence of ECP member from Punjab, Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja had called it a unanimous verdict. However, the full text of the 36-page order \u2014 an unsigned copy of which is available with\u00a0Dawn<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 was not officially released till late evening on Saturday, raising questions whether it was really a unanimous decision and providing fodder to rumour mills to go into overdrive over the possibility of a dissenting note.<\/p>\n The ECP had on Friday issued just two pages of its order.<\/p>\n ECP Secretary Omar Hamid Khan, when contacted, rejected as baseless rumours of \u201csome member being upset\u201d.<\/p>\n PTI\u2019s Senior Vice President Chaudhry Fawad Hussain while talking to reporters outside the ECP secretariat wondered, \u201cWhat the chief election commissioner (CEC) had read on Friday if there is no judgement to release despite the passage of over 24 hours\u201d.<\/p>\n He pointed out that more than 24 hours had passed, yet the detailed order in the Toshakhana case was not being released though the PTI lawyers had applied for a copy on Friday evening.<\/p>\n He contended that if the order did not carry the signatures of all the ECP members, then there was a very clear law on the judgement, adding \u201cif your members\u2019 signatures were not on it, then it was not a judgement\u201d.<\/p>\n He claimed that the CEC did the same while announcing its decision in the prohibited funding case. He alleged that additions had been made to the judgment after it had been uploaded on the ECP\u2019s website.<\/p>\n He said any unconstitutional means used to remove Imran Khan from political arena would weaken the country. He contended that people had rejected the ECP\u2019s order disqualifying Mr Khan.<\/p>\n The PTI leader alleged that with the connivance of some ministers, the ECP had selected constituencies for Oct 16 by-polls and yet the voters elected Imran Khan from majority of the constituencies.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople gave their verdict in favour of Imran in Punjab by-elections as well. And, if there had been a bit of democracy, we would have moved towards general elections,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n Referring to the ECP\u2019s verdict, he said an attempt was made to disqualify Imran Khan to align him with Nawaz Sharif but added that the rulers must have witnessed the rejection of the suspicious move as the masses held countrywide demonstrations against the decision.<\/p>\n Fawad Chaudhry claimed that changes were being made in the ECP verdict as things suiting to the government were being included in it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are asked not to commit contempt and we don\u2019t want to, but what should be done to such an election commission, when references are pending against chief election commissioner and two of its members and superior courts are not hearing them and we are asked to approach the same ECP for verdicts,\u201d he said, adding sarcastically, \u201cthey can\u2019t be garlanded [over their performance]\u201d.<\/p>\n The PTI leader urged the chief justice of Pakistan to decide on these references.<\/p>\n \u201cEither tell us that these could not be called references or convene the Supreme Judicial Council to decide these,\u201d he remarked.<\/p>\n He pointed out that Toshakhana references against PPP leader Asif Zardari and PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif were pending for the last 10 years.<\/p>\n People will be left with no other option but to come out and remove these rulers to save the Constitution, he said.<\/p>\n Fawad Chaudhry said the plan to exclude Imran Khan from parliamentary politics through any minus-one formula would not work.<\/p>\n Another senior PTI leader criticised the election watchdog.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy is ECP holding onto the verdict. What is cooking up,\u201d party Secretary General Asad Umar tweeted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ISLAMABAD: Mystery continues to surround the verdict announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Friday\u00a0disqualifying\u00a0Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan for making false declarations. Announcing the verdict in the absence of ECP member from Punjab, Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja had called it a unanimous verdict. However, the full text of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-islamabad","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106541,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106539\/revisions\/106541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/106540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}