EDITORIAL: To the question of when an election should be held to a dissolved assembly, Article 224(2) of the constitution has quite an unambiguous answer. It says, “When the National Assembly or a Provincial Assembly is dissolved, a general election to the Assembly shall be held within a period of ninety days after the dissolution, and results of the election shall be declared not later than fourteen days after the conclusion of the polls”.

There are no ifs and buts about this constitutional mandate, and it doesn’t concede any space to the “spirit of Article 218” that the Senate on Monday relied upon in support of its resolution for same-day polls.

The resolution was not on the agenda, but as the opposition had walked out, the ruling coalition hurriedly brought it up and passed it. Signed by the lawmakers of all coalition parties, the resolution says that holding separate elections to Punjab assembly will “inevitably influence the outcome of general elections as the province is the largest federating unit with more than 50 percent of total seats in the lower house of parliament.

As such, it will trample upon the smaller provinces’ role in the Federation”. And the Senate was not the only forum where the drums were beaten for same-day polls; the Sindh Assembly also passed a resolution on the same lines and the caretaker cabinet of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa too demanded same-day polling, arguing that the next month’s election in Punjab will influence the elections for the National Assembly.

That intense power struggle in functional democracies is inevitable is a fact. But there too there are rules of the game. For the political power contenders in Pakistan these rules have been laid down in the Constitution. Pakistan is a federation and draws its jurisdictional quota from what provinces concede. Barring four or five portfolios, including defence and foreign affairs, every other segment of state power is the monopoly of the federating units.

The provinces have their own legislative houses and governance setups that function under the constitutionally recognised right of self-governance.

So, there is no logic behind the argument that elections to Punjab Assembly would weaken the state. It is abundantly clear that there can be snap elections to the provincial assemblies and National Assembly, if needed. Suppose the provincial assemblies of Punjab and KP were dissolved in the very first year of their five-year term.

Would that mean that they are to be governed by caretakers for rest of the four years, or for as long as the National Assembly is not dissolved? Secondly, the crisis of any kind (financial or law and order) finds no place in the Constitution as a plausible justification for delay or postponement of elections that are supposed to be held within 90 days.

As to on what date within the 90 days the polling should take place that’s for the Election Commission of Pakistan to decide. Given that constitutions are organic and keep evolving by embracing emerging imperatives, it may be possible to subordinate the electoral timeline to the need of the hour. But as of now there is no such thing – there is no compulsion to hold elections to the provincial assemblies and National Assembly on the same day.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023