Jamaat-e-Islami’s candidate for Karachi mayor, Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman, said on Saturday that PTI members who do not vote for him will be disqualified and their vote would not be counted.
Speaking to Shahzad Iqbal on Geo News on Saturday, Naeem said that PTI’s chairman had himself instructed all his party members elected to to local bodies in Karachi to support JI’s candidate.
He added that if these candidates refused to show up, did not vote or voted for the PPP candidate, the defection clause would apply to them.
However, he added that the Pakistan People’s Party, JI’s main competitor for mayor, was hoping to get candidates to vote for them and then be disqualified. Naeem said that he had already sent a Supreme Court decision to the Election Commission of Pakistan saying that voting against party orders would not only lead to disqualification but would also lead to votes not being counted.
Naeem said his party had fulfilled all legal requirements for the elections while the PPP was failing to even understand the mathematical equation of the elections.
He said that the PPP was continuously trying to undermine transparency in the local bodies elections. He alleged that the PPP had carried out delimitations of constituencies in a way that would help them win more seats despite getting fewer votes, as the JI had gained over 900,000 votes to the PPP’s 300,000.
He also added that the the JI had 193 seats while the PPP only had 173, and the PPP was now resorting to horse trading to capture the mayor’s seat.
The election for Karachi’s mayor is set to be held on June 15 with a tough competition expected between JI’ Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman and PPP’s Murtaza Wahab.
