The Pakistan People's Party has said that the local bodies elections held under the acting Chief Election Commissioner Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar have completely destroyed the people's faith in free and fair elections and exposed the extent of degeneration of the national institutions under the undemocratic regime.
While rebutting the claim of the Chief Election Commissioner that the foreign election observers raised no objections against the two phases of local bodies elections and that these elections were held in a transparent manner, deputy secretary general Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi; Malik Mukhtar Ahmed Awan, former federal law minister; Khalid Hanif Lodhi, district president Habibullah Shakir and other leaders said that perhaps the CEC had not read the interim reports of Commonwealth, European Union, and Canadian observers, who have pointed out several sorts of pre-poll and polling day rigging resorted to by the military regime.
Carving out new towns in Multan, gerrymandering of constituencies, institutionalised kidnapping of the councillors, nazims and naib nazims and shifting them to remote areas and their forced change of loyalties, naked violation of code of conduct by General Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz, and their handpicked chief ministers of Punjab and Sindh, stuffing and theft of ballot boxes, all included in the long list of electoral fraud committed by the regime and reported by the foreign observers.
They said: "The turnout at many polling stations of the constituency of a federal minister was shown 'as high as 97 percent' despite the fact that not more than 20 percent voters reached the polling stations to cast their votes."
They feared that such conditions might force the people of Pakistan to demand any future elections under the United Nations or any other organisations and asked for the establishment of an independent election commission in consultation with all the stakeholders to avoid such an eventuality.
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