LCCI elections: PIAF Founders Alliance maintains winning record

The PIAF-Founders Alliance won all seven seats of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) in corporate class elections for the year 2016-17held on Monday.

Their main and only opposition was Businessmen Front Group which only nominated one candidate, Tahir Malik. Out of total 1,010 voters, 3,068 cast their votes. The PIAF-Founders Alliance got 668 panels vote while the Businessmen Front Group got 38 panel votes.74 votes were rejected on technical basis.

The PIAF members, Muhammad Nadeem Qureshi got 811 votes, Abdul Basit got 841, Muhammad Arshad Chaudhry got 812, Moazzam Rasheed got 801, Mian Muhammad Nawaz got 803, Ali Hussam Asghar got 839 and Javed Iqbal Siddiqui got 782 votes. On the other hand Tahir Malik got 192 votes. The elections were an eventless happening with PIAF obtaining a sweeping victory.

PIAF Founders Alliance has been the sole governing body of LCCI for more than a decade with no other alliance or forum managing to get any seats in the board. Prior to today’s election results, Tahir Malik spoke to Pakistan Today and said that he was the only person appointed to oppose PIAF because he had taken a stand to break the “control of PIAF.” He had also filed a legal writ against one of the PIAF candidates Abdul Basit. He said, “Since I am the one who had filed the writ, hence I am the one standing against seven of them.”

Abdul Basit also spoke to Pakistan Today and said, “They felt the suit was necessary, we don’t feel that it was.” About the differences in the agendas for both forums, he said that both parties had the same agenda, which was to solve the problems of businessmen, and the only difference is in the capability to solve those problems. He stressed that the voters were going to choose the one they consider more likely to help solve their issues.

Farooq Iftikhar, Haroon Shafiq Chaudhry and Nadir Kamal Usman were the Election Commissioners. In the second phase, polling for 8 seat of Associate Class will be held on September 27 (Tuesday) and 8,734 voters are expected to use their right of vote. The final results will be officially announced on September 30 in the scheduled Annual General Meeting.