Ruling Parties Staged Drama to Escape Elections and Hide Failures: Nationalist Leaders

**Quetta (Qudrat Daily):** Leaders of Baloch and Pashtun nationalist parties have accused the ruling parties of deliberately avoiding local government elections to conceal their political failures, calling the postponement a conspiracy against democracy.

Speaking on the suspension of local government elections, Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party’s Central Secretary Abdul Rahim Ziaratwal, National Party’s central leader and Member of the Provincial Assembly Mir Rahmat Saleh Baloch, and Balochistan National Party’s Central Secretary for Information Agha Hassan Baloch said that the government filed petitions in courts under the pretext of weather conditions and law and order to delay the polls, thereby once again curtailing the democratic process.

They said that when the public showed confidence in nationalist parties and nearly 200 councilors were elected unopposed, the ruling parties panicked and resorted to the courts to hide their defeat. The leaders noted that the Election Commission had twice rejected petitions filed by the Chief Minister of Balochistan seeking postponement of the elections, and they had expected the Balochistan High Court to ensure that polls were held on schedule.

However, they expressed disappointment over the sudden intervention by the Federal Constitutional Court, which they said made the elections controversial and caused distress to democratic and nationalist forces.

The leaders stated that parties seeking the postponement of local government elections were in fact afraid of the public verdict and were fleeing from the democratic process. They termed the petitions filed by certain political parties as an attack on the people’s fundamental democratic right.

They demanded that local government elections be held without further delay so that citizens could exercise their right to elect representatives at the grassroots level.