The Federal Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar has said that the government was seriously contemplating changing the election rules to ensure fair elections throughout the country.

“We are seriously thinking and carefully examining that at least those amendments should be included which already have the consensus,” said Tarar while addressing a stakeholder’s conference on electoral transparency jointly hosted by the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI), Coalition for Elections and Democracy (CED) and Fredrick Neumann Foundation for Freedom.

Mustafa Kamal of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Taj Haider of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Anwar Kakar of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), Birgit Lamm of Fredrick Neumann, Ahmed Bilal Mehboob of PILDAT, Mukhtar Ahmed Ali of CPDI and others were present at the conference.

The Law Minister said that the elections were crucial but it’s also vital to consider the environment. He stated that regrettably previous administrations did not place much emphasis on local government elections, which are essential to democracy and the democratic process. He advised us to alter our perspective on this.

When addressing the conference, Senator Haider stated that although the census and delineations are essential components for free and fair elections in any nation, no one discusses these topics.

Mustafa Kamal said that the lack of an open census was the reason why his party abstained from the Karachi local government elections.

He said that Karachi’s delimitations suffered from major issues since certain union councils only have 20,000 voters while others have 90,000. In every census the first step is to count the dwellings but sadly this process is defective, he claimed.

Senator Kakar said that elections in two provinces would lead to a new catastrophe. He remarked that they had two choices. One was handling crises while the other was conducting elections in accordance with the law. He emphasized how important it was right now to manage the problem.