Legal and electoral experts have differing opinions on the Supreme Court’s Saturday verdict, some seeing it as a blow to the rights of voters while others terming it a consequence of the PTI not offering enough legal argument during the proceedings.
Talking to The News on Saturday night, PILDAT President Ahmed Bilal Mehboob said: “The PTI focussed on political considerations in the case and almost ignored legal and constitutional grounds. Since courts are a legal forum, political arguments didn’t cut much ice.”
According to him, “The SC judgment is obviously a major setback for the party. The real loss is in the form of deprivation of 226 reserved seats including 60 in NA. This robs the party of its chance, if at all there was any, to come to power but parties do fall and rise again.”
Advising the PTI to “get rid of its focus on agitational politics and instead prepare to become an effective opposition in the National Assembly and the Punjab Assembly”, Mehboob added that the party “may even be in a position to form government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.”
If that were to happen, Mehboob’s advice to the PTI is that “saner elements in the party should focus on playing as effective a role as possible whether in opposition or in a provincial government by establishing working relations with its adversaries.”
Reacting to Saturday night’s Supreme Court verdict, lawyer and independent politician Jibran Nasir laid out the consequences the PTI now faces after losing the ‘bat’ symbol.
Tweeting that there is now no “option for PTI affiliated candidates except contesting as independents”, Nasir wrote that “every single candidate will have to do an individual campaign with customised advertising as everyone would have a different symbol. This has a direct impact on election expenses, organising, canvassing etc.”
According to Nasir, had the PTI retained its unified symbol, despite not being allowed to campaign, its voters “could have mobilised and organised themselves around a unified symbol which [will] not be possible now further denting the campaign.”
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