lahore
In its first formal reaction on May 11 elections, Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians on Wednesday alleged that elections were massively rigged, but it had accepted the results only for the sake of continuity of democracy and country’s solidarity.
“Our workers are highly perturbed over the rigging, but we are not going to launch any agitation to protect democracy”, party central Secretary General Sardar Latif Khan Khosa told a news conference here.
He said PPP’s mandate in 1977 elections was not accepted, “but we are not going to repeat that practice”. Khosa predicted that those who had won the election through ‘fake mandate’ would not be able to run the government for more than a year.
Khosa said that though his party had accepted the election results in the best interest of the country, but it would be better if the thumb impressions on the ballots were verified through biometric system. He said all the moderate political forces have been kept out of power through manipulation. “We did not have a level playing field to run the election campaign. Our offices were ransacked and corner meetings were disrupted. Our leaders also faced life threats”, he maintained, adding, that there were no such threats to their opponents.
Talking about rigging, he said PPPP had written a letter to the Election Commission of Pakistan that it had no faith in the employees of WASA and LDA acting as Presiding Officers and Polling Officers; but the ECP did not take any action over the complaint. “In many constituencies, our polling agents were not allowed to enter the polling stations. They were neither allowed to be present during the vote count nor were they given the election results”, he alleged.