PRESS RELEASE (Women Media Center Pakistan)
No more hopes from Election tribunals, Dr. Arif Alvi, PTI
(Islamabad: Staff Reporter): “Election Tribunal should have given verdict in 120 days, but they failed to do so. We are losing hope because of exploitation, oppression and injustice in this country.” Said Dr. Arif Alvi of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), MNA at a five day media training workshop arranged by Women Media Center in collaboration with NED – National Endowment for Democracy, on “Post Election Scenario” in Islamabad from 5th – 9th April, to enhance the skills of print and electronic female journalists and students of mass communication and media sciences from different universities of Islamabad. He also urged: “Our party is the most affected party which has suffered injustice in General Elections 2013. There were a lot of evidences regarding rigging in elections in form of videos and FIRs but no action was taken by Tribunal.”
On this occasion, Asad Umar; the Senior Vice President and Policy Head of PTI, discussed that their party had registered up to 38 petitions in National Assembly and all of them have still been in process for nine months. Whereas, according to Election Tribunal, it was endorsed that the result will be announced within 120 days. He then exerted: “As it is said that Justice delayed is justice denied.” He further said that his party is also in contact with ECP directly to resolve the cases of the registered petitions.

Moreover; Asad Umar also mentioned that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) has filed a bill in assembly in which they demanded for electronic voting system in Pakistan that can be helpful in leading fair and more transparent elections in future. Because not only PTI has complains regarding this but also various other parties are not satisfied with the election results.
Earlier, Fauzia Shaheen – Executive Director of Women Media Center Pakistan addressed the session and said: “In Pakistan it is impossible to stop the election rigging and electoral fraud until the free and fair elections take place. In order to achieve this goal we need to establish electronic thumb print impression system in elections like India did.” ‘The election commission should give the result of the petitions as soon as possible so to restore the trust of public on elections.’ She further added.

In addition, Mr. Riaz Fatyana, the former Minister of Education and Information Technology Punjab, conducted a presentation on Election Reforms to ensure free, fair and transparent election where he highlighted many types of rigging and a summary of election petitions pending in tribunals. Addressing to the participants he said, “There are total numbers of 410 referred election petitions out of which 211 have been disposed of whereas 199 petitions are still pending.”

Later, Mr. Zafarullah Khan- Executive Director of Center for Civil Education (CCE) Islamabad addressed the session and elaborated the participants about the voting system and the role of election tribunal. He said, “There are 86 million registered voters in Pakistan out of 200 million population and according to NADRA 80% voters are in between the age of 18 to 35 years in Pakistan which is called the Youth Wealth. But, unfortunately most of the votes are either changed or not even casted.”
Also, the Chief Guest Aasma Shirazi, a renowned journalist and news anchor of Dawn News TV, addressed the session by sharing her professional experiences in the field of journalism. She said: “Women are capable of covering of all sorts of beats in media; they should not be just limited to human welfare or social beat alone!” During the workshop participants were given practical training of Camera handling, script writing and production of news package.