Peace, not polls

Winston Churchill famously said, “Britain will win the war if our courts are delivering justice to the people”. It is time for us to keep reminding ourselves of those golden words. What is the big hurry in the apex courts for elections in two of the provinces? There have been other occasions when a way out of one constitutional rigmarole or the other has been found. It makes one wonder why it is not possible this time. For instance, the Constitution requires holding of census in the country at an interval of every 10 years to ensure fair representation of people in the legislature. That has not happened many a time. And nobody has been framed for constitutional violation. The nation wants to know where have all domestic and foreign borrowed loans gone, or have they vanished into thin air?
We need to worry about the misery being unleashed through International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreements that have been signed since 2019 by both ‘selected’ and ‘imported’ governments. The 1970 elections held in the chaotic conditions that were prevailing in the erstwhile East Pakistan led to an outcome that cannot be described as favourable to the country. Do we want to go down that road again in 2023? Surely not. Absolutely not. Transparency and accountability should be the hallmark of every pillar of the state. Therefore, we should allow the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to play its due role. Things need to be stable before they make any move in any direction. We are no different. Let us be stable before moving ahead towards general elections.
ALI ASHRAF KHAN
KARACHI