ISLAMABAD: Report of the inquiry commission constituted to investigate allegations that the last general elections had been rigged has not only dealt a blow to credibility of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) but also exposed fissures within its ranks.

Commenting on the report that rejected all the charges, senior Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf leader and lawyer Hamid Khan has blamed his party’s legal team for the fiasco.

Talking to Dawn on Sunday, he alleged that “the party has been hijacked by the remnants of the (government of) former military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf”.

Take a look: Parliament watch: PTI in the shadow of the Judicial Commission’s report

He went on to claim that a conspiracy had been hatched to destroy the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf by the “forces of status quo”.

When asked to identify the people who, according to him, were behind the conspiracy, he named Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf general secretary Jahangir Tareen. “Don’t you know that he was a minister during the Musharraf regime?”

He alleged that his party’s chairman, Imran Khan, had not been advised properly by his team and it had agreed “on wrong terms of reference” for the inquiry commission.

Hamid Khan, who appeared unhappy with his party’s leadership for not consulting him over matters relating to the commission, said the reference prepared by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s legal team was ”wrong”.

Saying that agents of status quo had joined the party in a large number after October 2011, he vowed to revive the old Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf which comprised “ideological people” who wanted to bring about “real change”.

“We will Insha Allah cleanse the party of people who are damaging it under a conspiracy,” he said.

Meanwhile, the PTI chairman, in his messages on social media, praised senior lawyer Abdul Hafeez Pirzada and his team for their efforts during the proceedings of the commission.

“I want to thank Pirzada’s team, esp Sikandar, for their hard work and passion. I have the greatest respect and admiration for him and the heroic way in which he fought PTI’s case before the judicial commission.

“Thanks also go to our PTI lawyers and volunteers, esp Ishaq Khakwani, for putting in marathon hours of work with unflinching commitment,” he said in Twitter messages.

Hamid Khan was apparently sidelined by the party leadership during the days of its Islamabad sit-in last year when he had submitted an unconditional apology on behalf of Imran Khan in the Supreme Court during the hearing of a contempt of court case against the PTI chief Imran Khan later withdrew the apology.

No Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf office-bearer agreed to offer comments on Hamid Khan’s remarks.

Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2015

THE commission tried to be charitable. It threw in the bit at the end that the “PTI was not entirely unjustified in requesting the establishment” of the commission. It referred to the “suspicion of a sinister design”.

But we don’t have to be charitable. In the end, the PTI case of mass fraud and manipulation hung on two claims. Both those claims the commission took on in detail. Both were demolished in their entirety. Both — in the end — were nothing more than political smokescreens.

The first one, from the commission report: “562. The PTI has alleged that the Provincial Election Commission Punjab had employed 200 extra persons, picked up from the Urdu Bazar Lahore, just 48 hours before the polling and surreptitiously printed ballot papers to be delivered to unknown constituencies.”

That was the core of the PTI’s case and it went something like this: the ECP colluded with the senior Punjab bureaucracy handling election-related matters and with the caretaker chief minister to print bogus ballots in an unauthorised location and then had them delivered to specific constituencies where the PML-N trounced the PTI.

But it was fairly obvious what had happened, and the commission quickly unearthed it — astonishingly, from the very evidence given by the very witnesses that the PTI itself called to prove its claims.Basically, a lazy ECP realised late in the game that it had screwed up oversight of the printing of the ballot papers.

The Printing Corporation of Pakistan was supposed to print all ballots, but didn’t have the capacity when the final numbers were given to them by the ECP — so the Printing Corporation roped in the Pakistan Postal Foundation to help print roughly 20 million ballots for Punjab.

Amazingly, the numbering and binding of ballot books is done by hand — manually. Nearly two hundred million ballots. Numbered and bound by hand. In the 21st century. Welcome to Pakistan.

Of course, if the Printing Corporation doesn’t have an automated process, neither does the Postal Foundation — so the Postal Foundation handed several million unnumbered ballots to the Printing Corporation and left the Printing Corporation to deal with the headache. On the eve of the election.

A desperate and frantic Printing Corporation then had to hire more people at the last minute to number and bind the loose ballots supplied by the Postal Foundation — and for this the Printing Corporation initiated a pretty standard chain of actions: it contacted the ECP, which had its provincial appointee contact the Punjab administration and so were located the necessary workers.

Thirty-four experienced and qualified individuals — similar to the 80 already hired from all over the country to number and bind the ballots — were hurriedly found and sent from Lahore to Islamabad to get the job done.

It was, yes, an ad hoc arrangement that should never have been needed if the ECP had been more competent and alert — but it wasn’t surreptitious, and it involved many agencies coordinating transparently among, literally, hundreds of people and under the same multi-layered supervision and security applicable to the rest of the ballots.

The second allegation: “567. PTI had pointed out that in many constituencies ballot-papers in excess of total number of registered voters had been delivered, raising serious doubts that the same was done for ulterior motive and so as to facilitate rigging and manipulation.”

Basically, the PTI’s claim was that the ECP Action Plan for Printing of Ballot-Papers for General Election 2013 required the Provincial Election Commissioners, who report to the ECP, to determine the ballot count for each constituency based on the total required at each polling station rounded off to the next hundred.

The big gotcha moment for the PTI was that in Punjab, the Provincial Election Commissioner left it to the Returning Officers in each constituency to determine the number of ballots requested — the Punjab ROs, who were lower court judges, being in the pocket of the PML-N via then-CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry, according to the PTI.

So the commission again did the obvious — it looked at how the excess ballot requests were made. It was essentially a mess. The ECP didn’t really care about its own Action Plan, the PEC wasn’t interested either and the ROs came up with their own formulas — formulas that were based on arithmetic and that had nothing to do with who the candidates were in the constituency.

Instead of polling station-level calculations, polling booth-level calculations were made (a polling station usually has two or three booths). On top of that, additional margins were added by some ROs. That bloated and left uneven the excess-ballot count across some Punjab constituencies.

But — and this was really the crux of the allegation — the commission found no pattern to the excess ballot distribution; it found no evidence the excess ballots were systematically unaccounted for; and it found no evidence — direct or circumstantial — that the excess ballots were systematically used to benefit any party.

Basically, the commission found that the PTI had spun administrative anomalies into a vast conspiracy — but, at the most cursory of probing, the conspiracy collapsed into very ordinary explanations of a quintessentially Pakistani administrative cock-up.

Ah, but you’re thinking, that’s the state’s fault and the PTI only pointed out very real flaws and demanded they be investigated. Well, no. The PTI case was built on a sophisticated understanding of the election process — even your average candidate probably doesn’t know the intricacies of excess-ballot requests and printing arrangements.

You can’t possibly argue that you know the detail of printing arrangements, but not the reasons for them, especially when no one made any attempt at all to hide the explanations all along.You also can’t possibly argue that you know the details of excess-ballot requests, but not that they revealed no pattern that disadvantaged your party or helped the PML-N. Election officials are not the ISI. There’s little that can be kept secret at the constituency level.

The commission didn’t — couldn’t — say it, but the PTI case was frivolous. It was, though, a frivolity based on Imran Khan’s deadly serious quest to knock out the government and become prime minister.

But we knew that already. Onwards, to the next PTI gimmick.

The writer is a member of staff.

cyril.a@gmail.com

Twitter: @cyalm

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2015

OCCASIONALLY, two plus two can equal five. Or, in the world of the PTI, 35 minus 35 can equal 71. And that’s why it is possible, occasionally, in the PTI world again, for an apology to be apologised for. For the few who care to remember and the even fewer who grasped the faux-logic, there is the peculiar tale of 35 punctures. Allegedly, once upon a time, two years ago, the PTI believed it was going to give the PML-N a real scare in Punjab. Some in the PTI even believed the party would trounce the PML-N in elections. Then, on election night, when it turned out the trouncing was not done to the PML-N, but by the PML-N, a legend was born: 35 punctures. Somehow, the alleged architect-in-chief, then caretaker chief minister Najam Sethi, decided to gloat about his achievement in scuttling 35 victories of the PTI to the chief beneficiary and incoming prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, over the telephone. Somehow, the alleged conversation was allegedly recorded. And somehow — the alleged chain of conversation would put a game of Chinese whispers to shame — the PTI learned of the Sethi-Sharif conversation and so was born the legend that the PTI obsessed over.

Now, having embarrassingly failed to even bring up the issue of 35 punctures before the judicial commission, Imran Khan has once again stunned the PTI’s critics. The PTI didn’t bring up 35 punctures because it was actually 71 punctures, Mr Khan claimed on Sunday. Double the punctures should mean double the evidence, but in at least one way the PTI has been consistent with the laws of mathematics. Since originally zero evidence was provided, doubling that zero would also mean zero evidence — which is exactly what Mr Khan or the PTI has provided. But politics is nothing if not for the brave, or perhaps just the foolhardy. Except no one in the PTI would like to question 71 punctures. After all, Arif Alvi bravely tried to own up to being wrong about 35 punctures and look what trouble that got him in.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2015

https://vimeo.com/129532050

http://e.jang.com.pk/12-07-2014/pindi/pic.asp?picname=616.gif

An election tribunal in Dera Ismail Khan disqualified Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) lawmaker Sardar Ikramullah Gandapur Khan for contesting  2013 general elections with a fake degree, Express News reported on Wednesday. 

Gandapur had won the election from PK-67 and his opponent Fataullah Mian Khel challenged the authenticity of his degree.

The election tribunal investigated the allegations and declared Gandapur ineligible to be a lawmaker.

Gandapur secured 28,073 votes, while Khel secured 14,983 votes.

PK-67 covers the area of Kulachi in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and is the most backward tehsil of DI Khan district.

Elections 2013: PTI did not exist in 50pc constituencies

ISLAMABAD: To form a government at the centre in Islamabad, a political party or alliance needs to win at least 50 percent of seats a the National Assembly in the general elections. But in the May 11, 2013 polls, Imran Khan’s PTI — now demanding the prime minister’s resignation by making big allegations of rigging without any evidence — was almost non-existent in 50 percent of the constituencies.

PTI’s security deposits were confiscated in 93 National Assembly constituencies and Imran Khan failed to post any candidate in 40 constituencies, meaning the PTI was almost non-existent in exactly 133 NA constituencies making up about half of the 272 total National Assembly constituencies.

In his speech, while concluding the historic joint session of parliament on Friday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that the security deposits of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) were confiscated in 55 National Assembly constituencies, whereas factually the PTI’s deposits were confiscated in 93 NA constituencies and the party failed to field any candidate in 40 constituencies.

Polling agents of the PTI in different polling stations across the country properly signed the results at their polling stations and the results of the concerned constituencies were consolidated and finalised on the basis of those results. So far, the PTI can’t level a single allegation of which constituency the consolidated results were having discrepancies or difference with those signed by its polling agents. The party and its chief are merely dancing to the tunes of those who want to grab power once again and to stop Chinese investment and create a Balochistan-like situation in the rest of the three provinces.

On May 11, 2013, polls were not held in NA-38, NA-83 and NA-254, so these constituencies are not included in this comprehensive study and data is analysed for the remaining 269 constituencies. During by-elections on two of these three constituencies, the PTI’s performance was worse and its security deposit was confiscated even in by-polls in NA-254, Karachi. The PTI has termed by-polls as fully transparent in an official statement.

According to existing election laws, the security deposit of a candidate is confiscated if he fails to secure less than 12.5 percent of the total validly casted votes. This study is on the basis of this rule. Otherwise, there was a suggestion before the May 2013 elections that security deposit should be confiscated if a candidate secures less than 20 percent of total votes. Had that suggestion been accepted, the PTI would have been non-existent in more than 70 percent of constituencies as its candidates secured considerable votes only in some KP constituencies and a handful of urban constituencies in Sindh and Punjab. In many constituencies, PTI even failed to secure 1 percent of the votes.

Following are brief details of 93 National Assembly constituencies where security deposits of PTI candidates were confiscated as they failed to secure even 12.5 percent of the total votes.

In NA-22, 71,236 votes were cast, 1,370 votes were secured by PTI, which are 1.92% of the total cast votes. Similarly, NA-24, 220,433, 21,394, 9.70%, NA-27, 170625, 18405, 10.78%, NA-31, 92744, 6120, 6.59%, NA-36, 53017, 1795, 3.38%, NA-37, 93968, 294, 0.31%, NA-39, 47602, 3805, 7.99%, NA-40, 77113, 8239, 10.68%, NA-41, 37461, 667, 1.78%, NA-44, 58959, 7069, 11.98%, NA-64, 238820, 11813, 4.94%, NA-65, 189710, 8885, 4.68%, NA-67, 222840, 7011, 3.14%, NA-74, 246463, 6199, 2.51%, NA-76, 185170, 17758, 9.59%, NA-77, 175444, 10444, 5.95%, NA-78, 177008, 11297, 6.38%, NA-79, 192563, 22420, 11.64%, NA-80, 205706, 25015, 12.16%, NA-89, 168977, 8236, 4.87%, NA-90, 152655, 1890, 1.23%, NA-92, 216146, 12248, 5.66%, NA-98, 201776, 20778, 10.29%, NA-99, 179614, 20212, 11.25%, NA-100, 184883, 6490, 3.51%, NA-101, 198457, 11592, 5.84%, NA-102, 173811, 5653, 3.25%, NA-104, 200095, 19318, 9.65%, NA-108, 239629, 25406, 10.60%, NA-109, 210501, 13813, 6.56%, NA-114, 212753, 18535, 8.71%, NA-115, 142358, 13369, 9.39%, NA-116, 146223, 9108, 6.22%, NA-132, 160238, 16467, 10.27%, NA-134, 146443, 14131, 9.64%, NA-137, 169065, 8896, 5.26%, NA-138, 182053, 13127, 7.21%, NA-139, 182988, 21725, 11.87%, NA-141, 187800, 11989, 6.38%, NA-142, 173646, 18325, 10.55%, NA-144, 169090, 18648, 11.02%, NA-145, 170939, 12319, 7.20%, NA-146, 163583, 11999, 7.33%, NA-147, 158404, 8195, 5.17%, NA-153, 211229, 18155, 8.59%, NA-156, 186878, 20837, 11.15%, NA-163, 174115, 16311, 9.36%, NA-171, 184298, 17514, 9.5%, NA-174, 211060, 6964, 3.29%, NA-175, 214671, 13805, 6.43%, NA-176, 205915, 10840, 5.26%, NA-177, 221919, 13757, 6.19%, NA-179, 205008, 9476, 4.62%, NA-180, 182206, 2555, 1.40%, NA-181, 229376, 20699, 9.02%, NA-182, 262364, 32212, 12.27%, NA-183, 158921, 197, 0.12%, NA-187, 184456, 360, 0.19%, NA-188, 206464, 1897, 0.91%, NA-191, 206143, 6653, 3.22%, NA-192, 191424, 16426, 8.58%, NA-193, 159044, 17158, 10.78%, NA-194, 162946, 15837, 9.71%, NA-195, 167340, 18347, 10.96%, NA-198, 126678, 8584, 6.77%, NA-199, 151680, 1272, 0.83%, NA-202, 140412, 2240, 1.59%, NA-204, 134908, 2187, 1.62%, NA-207, 144959, 1290, 0.88%, NA-208, 111131, 7589, 6.82%, NA-210, 99501, 561, 0.56%, NA-212, 189836, 1064, 0.56%, NA-213, 218648, 2520, 1.15%, NA-215, 170509, 1506, 0.88%, NA-216, 172372, 904, 0.52%, NA-221, 139974, 14544, 10.39%, NA-222, 146770, 1499, 1.02%, NA-223, 184578, 1486, 0.80%, NA-224, 207130, 4534, 2.18%, NA-225, 182765, 340, 0.18%, NA-236, 199225, 1395, 0.70%, NA-242, 198288, 10889, 5.49%, NA-243, 241233, 29875, 12.38%, NA-255, 177594, 19033, 10.71%, NA-258, 171331, 17697, 10.32%, NA-260, 169393, 7653, 4.51%, NA-261, 132402, 2920, 2.20%, NA-263, 101703, 3227, 3.17%, NA-264, 92925, 1884, 2.02%, NA-265, 86334, 6037, 6.99%, NA-267, 88280, 95, 0.10%, NA-268, 61826, 575, 0.93%, NA-270, 99860, 1320, 1.32%.

PTI chief Imran Khan who is terming himself as ‘Prime Minister Imran Khan’ nowadays couldn’t even field candidates in the following 40 constituencies: NA-23, NA-55, NA-73, NA-87, NA-88, NA-91, NA-94, NA-103, NA-143, NA-184, NA-185, NA-200, NA-201, NA-203, NA-205, NA-206, NA-209, NA-211, NA-214, NA-217, NA-218, NA-219, NA-220, NA-226, NA-227, NA-229, NA-231, NA-232, NA-234, NA-233, NA-235, NA-237, NA-238, NA-249, NA-257, NA-262, NA-266, NA-269, NA-271, NA-272.

Not only this, among 269 constituencies where polling was held on May 11, 2013, Imran Khan’s PTI fielded 229 candidates of which 202 lost the elections and only 30 candidates filed petitions in election tribunal, meaning exactly 172 candidates were hundred percent sure of their defeat because of public reaction. Very few know that not all the 30 of these petitions were on charges of rigging and a few were against the eligibility of the oppoing candidate.

Now Imran Khan’s PTI, instead of strengthening the party at grassroots level to give better results in the 2018 polls, has started attacking the media, criticising it for becoming a puppet in the hands of secret forces and the party chief declaring himself as prime minister.

Imran’s 16 allegations based on speculation

Huzaifa RehmanMonday, September 08, 2014 
From Print Edition

ISLAMABAD: Imran Khan’s 16 allegations about rigging are based on speculation, and he is presenting to the nation twisted versions of various statements and reports in a misleading manner. He has so far failed to put forward proof of any one of his allegations.

Imran should have reservations about the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) instead of the government in the first place. It has been proved by investigations that Imran is trying to weaken the system in pursuance of his ego. Out of 16, Jang and The News have published nine of his allegations while seven others have been published in other publications.

Imran Khan presented a twisted version of the statement of Chaudhry Nisar regarding the verification of thumb impressions. Nisar had said that verifying thumb impressions of 60-70 thousand voters in each constituency was impossible because magnetic ink has not been used and due to a lack of professional staff and training at Nadra to make the verifications.

To say that votes could not be verified does not mean that they are fake. It was the responsibility of the caretaker government to ensure that elections are conducted transparently and this issue is already being heard in a court of law.

Imran has based his allegation of 35 ‘punctures’ with respect to caretaker Punjab chief minister Najam Sethi on Fafen reports. However, Fafen has not made any such assertion. Rather, it had said in its report with reference to the comparative analysis of 35 constituencies the margin with which candidates won these constituencies is lesser than the cancelled votes. Fafen raised some questions about this phenomenon but never called it wrong. It made clear that votes could be rejected due to many reasons. Out of these 35 seats, only 15 are in Punjab and PTI candidates are runners-up in only seven of them. Najam Sethi was a nominated candidate of the PPP and had changed 28 out of 30 provincial secretaries because they had been part of the team of Shahbaz Sharif.

Imran said Nawaz Sharif delivered a speech at a time when only 30 percent of the results were announced, whereas Geo TV, like other channels, was showing unofficial results collected from its correspondents spread across the country. Since Geo has a vast network of correspondents, it was swift in showing results.

Some channels were showing the result of the constituency of Khwaja Saad Rafiq on the night of the election but Geo was responsible enough not to follow them, as allegations of rigging had surfaced. If Geo is involved in rigging, then another five news channels are also involved. Every channel has thousands of employees, hence tens of thousands of people would be involved in pre-planned rigging, which is baseless.

Imran’s fourth allegation about the printing of ballot papers from a private publisher is wrong since the ECP has made it clear that all ballot papers were printed in the presence of the army.

The four constituences – NA 110, 122, 125 and 154 – that Imran wants opened could not be opened by the government or Nawaz Shairf. According to ECP laws, only a tribunal can investigate rigging in all these constituencies.

Imran’s sixth allegation that record rigging took place in these four constituencies is wrong as Fafen has reported zero violation of laws in NA-110.

Imran’s seventh allegation about the role of the PML-N in getting Jangir Tareen defeated from NA-154 is wrong as the PML-N itself has lost this seat. Imran Khan’s eighth allegation that the PPP has also accepted rigging in Punjab is wrong because the PPP itself has lost important seats in Punjab and it has no place in the province even if Imran’s allegation is right.

Imran Khan’s nineth allegation that election tribunals have failed in dealing with the cases is contrary to reality, as 14 election tribunals of the country have disposed of about 300 out of 410 cases which accounts for 75 percent of the total. Imran Khan’s tenth allegation that a partial ECP has appointed tribunal judges is wrong as judges were appointed by chief justices of the respective high courts.

Imran’s 11th allegation that tribunals were slow in working is wrong as is evident by the delaying tactics used by Usman Dar in a case against Khwaja Asif so that the case could not be resolved in 120 days.

Imran Khan’s 12th allegation that if the ECP decides the cases, the Nawaz Sharif government would fall is wrong as in reality, PTI could not succeed in any of the 39 constituencies decided so far while it has challenged only 58 constituencies. If all the remaining 19 cases are decided in PTI’s favour, Imran Khan will still not be able to form a government.

Imran Khan’s 13th allegation that tribunals are favouring PML-N is wrong as the tribunals have disqualified 10 PML-N candidates so far. Raising a finger on the Supreme Court is laughable because the apex court has already sent home a sitting prime minister. Imran Khan’s demand for the PM’s resignation is unconstitutional as even the SC does not have the power to form a technocrats’ government as per his demand. Imran’s 15th allegation that this government is unable to reform the system is wrong as the government has already set up an electoral reform committee which has three members from the PTI.

Imran’s 16th allegation that former CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry, former caretaker chief minister Punjab Najam Sethi, former Chief Election Commissioner Fakhurdin G Ebrahim, Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman and a brigadier of the MI are involved in rigging is shameless as all the aforementioned personalities have rejected the allegation and sought proof from Imran. But like the 15 other allegations, the last one is also based on speculation and twisted reports and statements.

The investigations of Jang and The News have made it clear that Imran’s allegations are a pack of lies.

PAKISTAN Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leaders have repeatedly claimed there was “massive rigging” in the 2013 elections. Let’s examine the veracity of that claim.

Imran Khan’s allegations have maligned then Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) chief, retired Justice Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, former chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry, and the caretaker set-up at the time, because he maintains that they, together with Nawaz Sharif, snatched the last election from him.

According to the ‘principles of electoral swing’, only a small per­centage of voters, ie 3-5pc, that traditionally vote for Party A, vote for Party B which gives the latter a lead of 6-10 percentage points, while the remaining disillusioned voters tend to abstain from voting altogether.

The poll outcome was in fact in consonance with statistical models projecting final results. Although the PTI manifesto appealed to urban youth, it was folly to believe it could sweep urban Punjab — the PML-N’s heartland where the party has won an overwhelming number of votes during earlier elections.

In rural Punjab, the PPP’s poor performance during the last five years and PML-N’s incumbency combined to help the latter at the hustings.

Article 218 of the Constitution devolves the responsibility of holding free and fair elections on the ECP, which “shall consist of Commissioner who shall be the Chairman of the Commission; and four members, each of whom has been a Judge of a High Court from each Province”.

In July 2012, parliament unanimously approved Mr Ebrahim as chief election commissioner (CEC). Under his leadership, the electoral body took several important measures to ensure electoral transparency.

The National Judicial Policy Forum headed by Pakistan’s then chief justice, in response to appeals from the CEC and political parties, placed 900 judicial officers, including sessions, additional sessions and civil judges at the ECP’s disposal to perform their duties as returning officers (RO).

This was done reluctantly because the Judicial Policy 2009, in order to reinforce its separation from the executive, had laid down that the judiciary was to play no role in the electoral process.

The ECP’s efforts resulted in the deve­lop­ment of an elaborate Computerised Electoral Rolls System; electoral rolls were printed with voters’ photographs and CNIC numbers; magnetised ink — recommended by Nadra — was produced by the Pakistan Council of Sci­entific and Industrial Research to affix voters’ thumb impressions on the rolls. (The special ink was developed to better identify voters through magnetic as well as optical readers.)

Polling stations were assigned on the basis of 2011 population census blocks. An SMS 8300 service was set up to help voters confirm their registration and the location of polling stations.

Electors were provided the oppor­tu­nity to get themselves enrolled in consti­tuencies of their residence, while CNIC data was used to ensure one vote per individual.

Higher grammage paper, not available in the market, was used to print ballot papers at the Pakistan Printing Corporation facilities in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi and the Security Printing Press, Karachi. To ensure that electoral materials were not tampered with, strict military cordons were maintained around the printing sites.

During printing, employees stayed at the facilities without access to visitors, mobile phones or electronic devices.

Materials were transported to district ROs’ camp offices under stringent security provided by the army and Rangers.

CNICs were checked, thumb impressions placed on electoral rolls, votes examined and counted, and results announced by the ROs in the presence of candidates’ election agents, and copies of the results were supp­lied to them.

The Represen­ta­tion of Peoples Act, 1976 provides can­didates the right to approach ECP for re­dress of their grieva­n­ces and recount of votes. Under Section 52 of the Act, after 60 days, candidates can only file appeals with election tribunals.

The 15 tribunals constituted by the CEC have the authority to open, recount, recheck votes and results. Against 849 assembly seats, a total of 402 appeals were filed before the election tribunals, out of which 312 have been decided.

Out of 241 PTI candidates who contested National Assembly seats, 27 returned as winners, 76 as runners-up and 138 at third position or lower. Only 29 PTI candidates filed petitions with election tribunals — 17 in Punjab, six each in Sindh and KP.

While 18 appeals have been decided, 11 remain pending along with those by 79 other candidates. Even assuming that all 29 appeals were settled in PTI’s favour, how would that have changed the final outcome?

This is not to suggest that individual can­didates did not or could not have tried to rig their contests. Nor it is in any way suggested that substantial electoral reforms are not needed.

However, if Mr Ebrahim or the ECP wanted to rig the elections, why would they undertake such elaborate and unprecedented efforts to prevent electoral fraud?

The writer heads the Dawn Elections Cell.

fahim@dawn.com

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2014