The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) continues to operate with 'skeleton' staff and has restricted its functioning on the pretext of preventive arrangements taken against Covid-19 with several important matters being dealt with by the Commission having landed on the backburner including the much hyped Foreign Funding Case.
On Nov 21, 2019, the ECP had decided to accept the request of opposition parties to resume the proceedings of 'Foreign Funding Case; on daily basis and fixed Nov 26 as the date to commence proceedings after a gap of 20 months.
Prior the Nov 26 hearing, the ECP last held regular hearing of Foreign Funding Case in March 2018 when the Scrutiny Committee was formed to scrutinise the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) funds.
The PTI requested ECP that the Foreign Funding Case relating to Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People's Party (PPP) should also be heard. The Commission accepted this demand and commenced proceedings relating to PML-N and PPP from Nov 26, 2019.
Since then, several hearings of the case were held till last month before the ECP decided to restrict its functions in the backdrop of measures taken to stop the spread of Covid-19. Presently, progress on this case remains stalled and it remains pending, Business Recorder has learnt.
Another important case that has landed on the backburner involved PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari. In January this year, the ECP had summoned Bilawal for alleged discrepancies in his wealth statement submitted with the Commission, and the case remains pending.
A case against Federal Minister for Water Resources Faisal Vawda is also pending in the ECP, seeking his disqualification for allegedly having dual-nationality at the time of submission of his nomination papers for general elections 2018.
A source in ECP told that due to limited staff, the ECP is not presently focusing on high-profile cases involving individuals and political parties.
Recently, the Commission sought reply from the provinces regarding conduct of local government (LG) elections. "But it is just a routine development-to fulfill official obligations. Due to large-scale outbreak of Covid-19, the proposed conduct of LG elections is marked with uncertainty. Both the ECP and the provincial governments know that. The rest is just routine exercise," the source said.
On March 24, the ECP, in a meeting, decided that all the female officers of the Commission and the subordinate female staff would be exempted from attending office.
Among other decisions taken in the meeting, it was decided to allow exemption to those employees from attending offices who were suffering from any kind of bacterial, viral or fungal infection, after receiving the related approval from the heads of their respective wings.
Maintaining 50 percent working staff at the ECP Secretariat and fixing ECP working times from 10 am to 2 pm were other decisions taken as precautionary measures against Covid-19.
The Covid-19 tally was touching 17,000 positive cases in Pakistan with 283 dead, till the filing of this report on Monday evening.
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