As per Constitution, President Arif Alvi is Head of the State and “shall represent the unity of the Republic”. Before entering the office he made before the Chief Justice of Pakistan the oath “That, in all circumstances, I will do right to all manner of people, according to law, without fear or favour, affection of ill-will”.
That kind of impartiality was a challenge confronting President Alvi in the wake of fixing dates for elections to the provincial assemblies of Punjab and KP that stand dissolved for quite some time. As to when elections to these houses should be held Article 105 and Article 112 of Constitution clearly mandate the governors to announce dates.
So the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) approached the governors for announcing the dates as they had not done while dissolving the legislatures. In his response, the Punjab governor told the ECP that he would use legal options instead of giving the date, and the KP governor said the Constitution doesn’t empower the commission to appoint the election date.
Given that the issue of dates is before the courts and therefore sub judice the election commission informed the president that it may not be able to enter into process of consultation with him.
That did not fit well with President Arif Alvi, who by then seemed to have been completely sold out to his parent party PTI’s stand on the polling dates, and asked Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja for a meeting and receive his admonition for the commission’s “poignant approach on this important matter”.
Then his secretary invited the head of the electoral body once again for “an urgent meeting”. The CEC thought over it and declined to come to the President’s House, saying the commission had already conveyed its mind to the president. That the head of ECP should refuse to meet the President of Pakistan is something that should not have happened.
But it did and President Arif Alvi had asked for it. May be he is under pressure of his party. In my view, he is always required to act strictly in accordance with his oath of office and constitution regardless of the circumstances or political or any other compulsions around him.
Rahmat Khan Afridi (Peshawar)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023