KARACHI, 5 August — Pakistan’s military government, keen to strengthen democracy from the grass-roots level, removed doubts yesterday that it intended to perpetuate in power for more than year, announcing that democracy will be incomplete without national and provincial assemblies, polls for which will be held next year.
The categorical announcement came from its chief planner Lt. Gen. Tanzim Naqvi, who had been trying to restructure the state apparatus with a view to making it more efficient. He told a local news agency that parliamentary elections were very much on the cards, and will be held according to the deadline given by the Supreme Court.
An Urdu newspaper gave the election date as sometime in July and August next year, claiming that the entire process for putting the national and the provincial assemblies, and the Senate will be over by the first week of October this year.
The government, has probably realized that pressure from within and from abroad has been far stronger for it to resist calls for the restoration of a popular administration in a country which has suffered military rule for 27 years of its existence. It also seemed to have realized that gimmicks aimed at warding off the pressure won’t work.
The regime had brought a legislation to disqualify those elected to the municipal agencies of the country in recent elections on the grounds of political affiliation.
But its plan has gone haywire after 95 percent of the councilors, elected in these elections, belong to one or the other political party.
Disqualifying them now would open a Pandora’s box, and would seriously impair the administration’s credibility in the eyes of the general public. According to unofficial results available from the Election Commission, runoff elections for the post of nazims and naib nazims (administrators and their deputies) have been ordered in at least 36 different constituencies of the country.
