Islamabad, Pakistan — It is the latest setback for former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
On Monday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) declared that the PTI-backed Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) could not claim allocated reserved seats in the national and provincial assemblies.
The PTI, unable to participate in the recent elections due to the ban on its electoral symbol, ordered its candidates to join the fringe right-wing religious party to expand its numerical strength in the National Assembly.
In its 22-page ruling issued on Monday, the five-member electoral body decided 4-1 that the SIC failed to submit a party list of reserved candidates before the ECP's deadline of February 22, two weeks after the elections of the February 8th.
The National Assembly of Pakistan has a total of 70 reserved seats which are distributed among parties based on their performance in the general elections. Similarly, the four provincial assemblies have a combined total of 149 reserved seats which are distributed similarly.
Most of these reserved seats have already been allocated; For now, about 77 remain vacant.
The PTI criticized the ECP ruling, calling it an attack on democracy.
“This is the latest assault on the heart of democracy,” Senator Ali Zafar of the PTI and a top party lawyer said during a speech in the Senate, the upper house of the assembly, on Monday after the decision was announced.
The ECP's decision opens the door for a protracted legal battle as PTI has announced that it will challenge the decision in higher courts.
However, if the party fails to overturn it, it could further affect its standing in the lower house of parliament, potentially allowing the ruling coalition to gain a two-thirds majority in the 336-member National Assembly.
What are reserved seating and why are they important?
Pakistan's general elections for the National Assembly are being held with 266 seats. But there are an additional 70 reserved seats (60 for women and 10 for minorities), giving the body a total size of 336 seats.
To achieve a simple majority to form a government, a total of 169 seats are needed. However, a two-thirds majority (or 224 votes) is needed to make any constitutional amendment.
Reserved seats are allocated only to political parties that win seats in the National Assembly, and the distribution is made based on their proportional representation after the general elections. Similarly, reserved seats are allocated in provincial assemblies based on the proportional performance of parties.
As per regulations, any political party participating in the elections must submit a list of its nominations for reserved seats before the elections, as per the schedule set by the ECP. However, after the polls, if a party has outperformed and needs to submit additional names for reserved candidates, it has two weeks to do so.
Independents have three days after their victory is announced to declare their party affiliation in the assembly.
The party they join gets an increase in the number of reserved seats they win, proportional to the number of independents who join them.
In the National Assembly, the ECP has already allotted at least 40 out of 60 seats to different political parties for its quota reserved for women. Similarly, seven of the ten seats reserved for the minority quota have already been allocated in the lower house of parliament. The rest are currently unoccupied.
What happened in the current elections?
Forced to participate in the recent February 8 general elections without its party symbol (the cricket bat) due to violation of electoral rules, the PTI fielded candidates as independents.
Despite facing a nationwide crackdown for almost two years, with its leader, former Prime Minister Imran Khan, jailed since August last year and its candidates unable to campaign freely, the PTI still emerged as the largest bloc , with its candidates obtaining 93 seats.
While the party alleged widespread fraud across the country and alleged a “stolen mandate”, its rivals, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), managed to cobble together a ruling alliance, with 75 and 54 seats respectively. , in coalition with other smaller parties.
Although they won the most seats, the PTI leaders, under Imran Khan, decided not to form a government with any of the main parties and instead joined hands with a fringe right-wing religious party, the SIC, to claim the seats. reserved. seating.
To further complicate matters, the SIC, despite being a registered political party, did not participate in the general elections. Its leader, Sahibzada Hamid Raza, chose to contest independently and won his seat in the city of Faisalabad, in the province of Punjab.
What does the ECP verdict say?
In its verdict, the ECP stated that the SIC had no right to claim the quota of reserved seats due to a “violation of a mandatory provision of submitting a party list for reserved seats, which is a legal requirement”.
He also said that the currently vacant seats in the National Assembly (23) — “no” will remain vacant and will be distributed among other parties based on the elected seats they have obtained.
The commission criticized the SIC by reminding them that they were given a specific deadline to submit a list of nominations, which the party did not do.
“Each political party, while taking any decision on crucial steps related to political party matters required by law, must be aware of the possible consequences they may face in the future,” the ECP wrote.
What are the consequences of the ECP's decision?
On March 3, Shehbaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) was elected the country's new prime minister by the National Assembly, obtaining 201 votes. Omar Ayub Khan, leader of the SIC-backed PTI, managed to secure 92 votes.
The biggest beneficiary of the ECP's decision will be Sharif's PMLN, along with the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which won the largest number of seats in the general elections, with 75, 54 and 17 respectively.
In case the PTI's legal challenge does not bring them any relief, the ruling coalition is certain to cross the magic figure of 224, which is required to achieve a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
However, if the PTI manages to reverse the ECP's decision, it can expect to gain 23 more seats in the National Assembly, plus additional seats in other provincial assemblies where it has done well. That could limit the ruling coalition to just shy of the two-thirds mark.
What does the legal fraternity think and what's next?
The ECP's decision has been widely criticized by lawyers, with many calling the order a “farce” or even “unconstitutional.”
Constitutional expert Asad Rahim says the ECP verdict aligns with previous decisions that he says have disenfranchised the people of Pakistan.
“There are precedents that expressly prohibit the minor technicalities on which the ECP banned the largest party,” the Lahore lawyer told Al Jazeera. “However, an even greater subversion of the democratic mandate is its division of the remaining seats among the smaller parties.”
Another legal expert, Rida Hosain, also questioned the decision to distribute the unallocated seats to other smaller parties. She maintained that no legal or constitutional provision permitted this “absurd” distribution.
“The entire framework of the Constitution and the law dictates that a political party must receive reserved seats through a system of proportional representation. It is totally undemocratic for other political parties to get a share of reserved seats beyond their proportional strength of general seats in the National Assembly,” Hosain told Al Jazeera.
Islamabad-based lawyer Salaar Khan also pointed out that the ECP's decision lacks any “compelling justification” for allocating the unallocated seats to other parties.
“However, the impact could well be to give the coalition government a full two-thirds majority in the National Assembly,” he told Al Jazeera.
On the other hand, lawyer Mian Dawood argued that the SIC was clearly at fault for not submitting its list within the deadline.
“This is the first case where a political party like the SIC has not submitted its list for reserved seats as required by law, but is now demanding them on the grounds of morality and the law of necessity,” Dawood told Al Jazeera.
Abdul Moiz Jaferii, constitutional expert and lawyer, termed the ECP verdict as another “technical knockout” suffered by the PTI.
“Perhaps the PTI itself opened the door to this by not defending its position against the ECP regarding its own reserved seat lists and by maintaining that they remain a political party, albeit without a symbol,” he told Al Jazeera.
The lawyers also expressed pessimism about the possibility of PTI receiving a favorable verdict from the higher courts.
“The PTI seems to have decided to challenge the decision before the Supreme Court, and the strict interpretation of the electoral laws by the Supreme Court is, of course, what brought the PTI here to begin with,” said lawyer Khan, referring to the verdict of the Supreme Court. In January this year he confirmed the ECP's decision to strip the party of its cricket bat symbol.
