December
7, 2007 Phase 3 of
Poll Process Gets Underway
in Pakistan By Muhammad Najeeb
Islamabad
Pakistan moved one step closer towards elections Friday as the third
phase of the Jan 8 polls began with election tribunals hearing cases
against the rejection and acceptance of nomination papers, including
of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz, who returned last month after
seven years of forced exile in Saudi Arabia, are among the 1,047
candidates whose nomination papers have been rejected by the
Election Commission.
All of them can file an appeal against their rejection in the
tribunals, headed by high court judges.
But Sharif, who also heads the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N),
has said he won't appeal to judges who have taken oath under the
Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO), which President Pervez
Musharraf enforced Nov 3 after imposing emergency in the country.
Sharif, who was sent into exile by the military regime in 2000, a
year after his elected government was overthrown, is demanding an
independent judiciary, the lifting of emergency and free and fair
polls. He may boycott the elections if his demands, backed by other
smaller opposition parties, are not met.
His party is also negotiating a joint strategy with another former
ruling party - Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) - to
launch a campaign against Musharraf's ouster.
Phase three of the elections will continue till Dec 14.
The National Assembly or lower house of parliament has 342 seats
with 60 reserved for women and 10 for non-Muslims. However, both
women and non-Muslims are eligible to contest direct polls as well
as the reserved seats.
Elections are being held on 272 seats in all the four provinces -
North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan -
the federal capital and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
A total of 13,490 nomination papers have been submitted.
Final lists of candidates would be displayed Dec 16.
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