No major change sans ‘During Election’ in lieu of ‘Pre-election Time’
The Law Ministry on Thursday sent the election code of conduct to the Election Commission after its vetting.
“The code of conduct has reached the commission after the Law Ministry’s vetting,” said Election Commission Shah Nawaz.
No major change has been suggested in the vetting by the ministry other than saying that it should be called ‘During the Election’ instead of ‘Pre-election Time’, he told UNB.
Earlier, the EC defined ‘Pre-election Time’ as the time from the date of announcement of election schedule to the date of publishing election results on gazette notification. But the law ministry suggested calling it as ‘During Election’.
The commission, in its meeting, will approve the code of conduct for political parties and candidates before the announcement of schedule for the country’s 10th parliamentary election.
Shah Nawaz hinted that the code will go through the commission meeting early next week.
In the vetting, the poster size has been converted to centimeter from inch, which will be 60cm × 45cm in stead of as (23’’ × 18’’).
Earlier, on October 30, the commission drafted the code of conduct.
On November 13, the commission finalised the proposed code barring the very important persons (VIPs) among the government beneficiaries from availing themselves of state facilities in electioneering once the election schedule is announced.
The proposed code was sent to the law ministry for vetting on November 14.
The VIPs among the government beneficiaries are the Prime Minister, the Speaker of Parliament, ministers, the Chief Whip, the Deputy Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition, Deputy Leader of the Opposition, state ministers, whips, deputy ministers and persons who hold equivalent post, MPs and city corporation mayors.
Source: UNB Connect
From the attitude and decisions of the EC, it’s beyond question that the EC has become a limb of the ruling party. They refrained from protesting against the arbitrary decision of the govt to abolish the provision of ‘at least 3 years in the party’ aiding it to encourage camel-trading besides increasing the deposit money for a candidate and increasing the ceiling of expenditure. The apprehension of the opposition party of the manifest bias of the EC is not baseless considering the fact that they have given registration to a sign-board party that failed to fulfill the requirement for registration. It’s now to see how efficiently and effectively the EC can control the election time situation in which perhaps the opposition won’t be a player..