The new president of Pakistan will be elected on Saturday. There will be a contest between the candidate of the ruling alliance including the Muslim League-N and the People’s Party and former president Asif Ali Zardari and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party Mahmood Khan Achakzai.
Polling started on Saturday at 10 am. The elected members will be able to exercise their right to vote at the polling stations established in the Parliament House and the four provincial assemblies till 4 pm.
Members of the Senate and the National Assembly will cast their votes in the Assembly Hall of the Parliament House, while the members of the four provincial assemblies will cast their votes in their respective assemblies. There are a total of 696 electoral votes in the presidential election. Among them are 336 National Assembly, 100 Senate and 65 provincial assembly votes.
The reserved seats that the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party was supposed to get are 42 electoral votes. The Peshawar High Court has issued an injunction on them till March 13, so now these votes will not be cast. On this basis, the total votes are now 654, but 10 of these electoral votes are empty, so 644 votes will be cast.
The President will be elected on the basis of secret ballot. In this, each member of Senate, National Assembly and Balochistan Assembly will count for one vote, while the number of members in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh Assembly will be divided into equal votes of Balochistan Assembly.
In presidential elections, Chief Justice Islamabad High Court for Senate and National Assembly and member of Election Commission for Punjab Assembly Nisar Durrani has been appointed as presiding officer.
The Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court for the Sindh Assembly, the Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly and the Chief Justice for the Balochistan Assembly are the presiding officers of the Balochistan High Court.
The Lower House (National Assembly), the Provincial Assemblies and the Upper House (Senate) constitute the Electoral College for the presidential election and the members of Parliament will cast their votes in the election.
The issue of casting votes in presidential elections is a bit complicated. Each member of the lower house and the upper house will have one vote, but in the provincial assemblies, one vote of the member of the assembly of any province other than Balochistan will not count. According to the constitution, the number of votes cast in favor of each candidate in a provincial assembly shall be multiplied by the total number of seats in that provincial assembly which currently has the least number of seats and the total number of seats in that provincial assembly. shall be divided by the number of votes cast.’
The House of Balochistan Assembly has the lowest number of members with 65 members. Thus, if the 65 members of Balochistan are divided among the 371 members of the House of Punjab, then 5.7 members of the Punjab Assembly will be considered as one presidential vote.
In the same proportion, one vote of 2.6 members will be considered in the house of Sindh Assembly consisting of 168 members and one vote of 2.2 members will be counted in the house of 145 members of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.
The presidential election shall be by secret ballot and a ballot paper shall be issued to each member. The name of the member to whom the ballot paper is issued shall be entered while the ballot paper shall be signed by the concerned Presiding Officer.
The names of the candidates shall be listed in alphabetical order on the ballot paper and the voting member shall vote by ticking the name of the preferred candidate.
The Election Commission has asked the candidates participating in the presidential election that they can nominate a polling agent, one of the members of the respective House or Assembly, who will observe the polling and counting process before the polling process starts.
In the presidential election, the candidate who gets more votes than his opponent will be considered successful. As a result of the election, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court will take oath from whoever is elected as the President.
On the other hand, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party candidate Mehmood Khan Achakzai has demanded the postponement of the presidential election in a letter addressed to the Chief Election Commissioner.
He said in his letter on Friday that several reserved seats in the National and Provincial Assemblies are still vacant, so the election should be postponed until the Electoral College is completed.
Mehmood Khan Achakzai wrote in the letter that a petition on the issue of specific seats is also pending in the Peshawar High Court.
President Dr. Arif Alvi has resigned from his post before the new presidential election. He was presented with a farewell guard of honor at the President’s House on Friday.
Dr. Arif Alvi was sworn in as the President of Pakistan on September 2018 and the five-year constitutional term of his office was completed in September last year, however, due to the incompleteness of the Electoral College, he remained in office for more than six months.
News Source : https://www.urdunews.com/node/842731
By Rafia Fayyaz (PNP Intern)