Dr Raheeq Abbasi, President of Pakistan Awami Tehreek, has described as joke the Election Commission’s decision of holding re-elections in constituencies where 51% of electorate ticked the ‘vote for none’ option on the ballot paper. He asked whether the condition of 51% vote was also applied to declare a candidate as winner. He said that in case 51% of people opted for ‘vote for none’ option, it should clearly mean rejection of the incumbent electoral system, adding that ordering a re-election in such constituencies was an insult of the wisdom of the electorate

Dr Raheeq Abbasi said that the Election Commission was making fun of Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution. He said that the Returning Officers (ROs) were asking meaningless questions about religious rituals instead of asking about corruption and character of the candidates, which was not appropriate. He asked the Election Commission to ensure transparent and strict scrutiny of the candidates but added in the same breath that it was not likely to happen as 7 days was too short a period to conduct meaningful scrutiny. He said that PAT’s demand of fixing 14 days for scrutiny was not accepted. He said that initially PAT had demanded the fixation of 30 days in order to enable all relevant organizations to help the ECP in conducting fair, strict and meaningful scrutiny. The party agreed to the government’s request to decrease scrutiny period to 14-days to facilitate the process but it appears that there was a method to madness as far as the government’s request was concerned, he regretted.