PESHAWAR: The Jamiat
Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) has published a white paper on the May 11
general elections where it claims the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI)
win in the province is a result of massive rigging.
The paper titled ‘Were Pakistan’s elections fair? JUI white paper on
election rigging in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (Fata)’ claims the PTI’s victory in the
province and the tribal belt was engineered to continue certain policies
from General (Retd) Pervez Musharraf’s nearly nine-year rule .
The 24-page document available with
The Express Tribune has
been authored by Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s spokesperson Jan Achakzai. It
details news reports, pictures, videos and tweets to make its point of
the alleged rigging in K-P.
The report says that prior to the elections, JUI-F chief Maulana
Fazlur Rehman had asked the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to
remove the K-P governor, saying he had been given the task to undermine
the JUI-F’s vote bank in the region. It alleges polling stations were
set-up in areas at a distance of 15 to 25 kilometres to prevent people
from casting vote. It adds that independent candidates as well as those
supporting the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) used development funds to
bribe voters.
The JUI-F’s demand for deploying army inside polling stations was
turned down. “Out of roughly 70,000 polling stations, around 32,000
were designated as sensitive,” it said, adding that 70,000 troops inside
polling stations could have saved the legitimacy of votes not only in
the region but also in Karachi, Balochistan and the rest of the
country. Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) neither had enough
information about polling stations nor were they assisted by the ECP.
‘Shocking irregularities’
The report terms irregularities in Peshawar, Mardan and Kohat divisions, where PTI swept elections as “most shocking.”
“The voter turnout has been from 80-270% in polling stations from
Peshawar to Nowshera, the constituency of PTI designate Chief Minister
Pervez Khattak.”
In Dir, voter turnout was between 80-120% despite women being banned
from casting vote and 70% of the population away from homes to earn
their livelihoods.
“Boxes stuffed with JUI-F’s votes were recovered from drains and
fields. It’s never happened in Pakistan’s history that a candidate was
declared a winner and came on third position after three days, as it
happened to JUI-F candidates in NA-10 and NA-11.” A large number of
votes polled on various constituencies like NA-1 which the report calls a
“two-votes-per-minute-machine,” puts the credibility of all electoral
results in doubt.
It also compares rigging claims made by the PTI against the Muttahida
Qaumi Movement and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in Karachi and
Lahore respectively and accuses it of conveniently forgetting what has
been done in K-P to make them the single largest party in the assembly.
Elections results and peace talks
While delving on rigging in K-P, the paper links the election results with present conditions in the area.
It claims that the JUI-F has done enormous work in Fata to prepare
groundwork for a peace deal with militants, however, there is a clear
divergence between the JUI-F and other stakeholders including the
establishment, civil society and sections of the media on how to deal
with militancy. These quarters still believe in the use of force as a
strategy to deal with the Taliban.
If the JUI-F had come to power it would have started working on the already-devised roadmap, it reads.
The report further states PTI’s stance on militancy and drones,
though lacking in detail and strategy, can be used to discredit the
negotiation plan made by the JUI-F and PML-N, in order to continue
Musharraf’s policies in Fata and Balochistan.
It also cautions that millions of unemployed and marginalised youths
can go the ‘other way’, if JUI-F is singled out of the democratic
process and blocked out of parliament.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 8th, 2013.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/573802/white-paper-jui-f-claims-ptis-victory-in-province-was-engineered/
