The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) of has released a white paper alleging that it revealed “widespread rigging and irregularities’’ in the February 8 general elections in the country. The white paper says that the constitutional rights of the party were denied and the elections were rigged heavily to deny victory to former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party. During these elections, voting was held both for the National Assembly and four provincial assemblies.
“We had won 180 seats in the (February 8) elections. But our seats were given to other parties through Form 47,” PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar said at a press conference in Islamabad on Thursday. He was flanked by other PTI leaders when he released the white paper, which has been published in both English and Urdu.
The entire electoral process, from the very beginning to the end, was compromised and marred by serious flaws, the document has alleged. The party demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja, saying he failed to discharge his duty, which the constitution expected of him. The CEC ignored most complaints PTI filed with him and took no action on them, Khan said.
He said a judicial commission should be formed to probe into the “snatching of 180 seats’’ from PTI. The PTI chief said his party had filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the widespread rigging. However, the plea has not been fixed for hearing so far, he lamented, despite the fact that it was filed a couple of months ago.
“We are issuing a 300-page white paper to bring it to the notice of the people as to how their mandate was stolen,” Barrister Gohar Khan said. “Our victory was turned into defeat by manipulating election results in the Form 47,” he claimed.
Incidentally, Form 47 is an important document regarding the declaration of the result in a particular electoral constituency. Form 47 provides an early overview of the election results, and these are displayed/updated on the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) as counting starts. However, instead of releasing official statements periodically, the ECP removed Form 47 and its provisional results from its website servers during the counting process.
The results of many electoral constituencies, both in the National Assembly and Provincial Assemblies, were announced by the Returning Officers (ROs) or the ECP. However, the detailed break-up of votes received by each candidate was not provided, despite PTI and some other parties asking for it. In disgust, one PTI member had remarked in mid-February that this was the story of Pakistan “from 1947 to Form 47’’.
The PTI chief said widespread electoral reforms are needed in Pakistan so that rigging can be eliminated and this is not faced by anyone again. PTI Secretary General Omar Ayub said the ECP was granted billions of rupees to hold free and fair elections in the country. However, the elections were neither free nor fair and the ECP was responsible for all the frauds committed under its watch.
On Wednesday, PTI Central Information Raoof Hassan said that Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa was not capable of delivering justice. Hassan alleged that Justice Isa was denying justice to all judges (of various high courts) who had written to him. It bears mention here that several judges had earlier written to Justice Isa, saying the intelligence and security agencies of Pakistan interfered in their work.
These agencies (and their operatives) were answerable to the Prime Minister. As such, the PM and the operatives were the ones who were indicted, Hassan said. However, it was odd that CJP Isa was seeking help from these indicted persons, Hassan said.
