Commissioner’s allegations and credibility of elections

Sarwar Kamal

Amid political uncertainty when majority of political parities except the PML-N are protesting against theft of their mandate and possible manipulation of election results, the allegations made by the commissioner of Rawalpindi has come as a shocking and damaging dent to our democratic credentials and international prestige.

This latest development has raised a huge question mark as far as the legitimacy and transparency of the Feb 8th elections is concerned.

According to the commisioner Liaquat Ali Chatta, the election results were manipulated in the 13 constituencies of the division in favour of PML-N candidates who were losing by a huge margin. He told reporters that the PTI- backed independent candidates were winning and leading the poles with a margin of more than 70,000 votes.

As we speak protests have erupted across the country demanding that the ECP should reverse this stealing of mandate of the people.

Unfortunately, these elections are proving to be the most rigged, fixed and controversial elections of our entire political history. The ECP pushed back PTI against the wall. On technical grounds, the ionic Bat symbol was taken away from PTI as a result the masses were disfranchised to cast the votes in favour of their favourite candidates. Horse trading has been encouraged in these elections which is against the true spirit and is against the sanctity of votes and the ECP didn’t play its part to stop horse trading which is against the will of the people.

Majority of the political experts and commentators were complaining that PTI has been denied as far as the level playing field is concerned while their opponents were given a free hand to carry out there election campaign.

There is no rocket science to fix this issue. Most of the losing candidates do have form No 45 issued by the ECP. This form provides us the actually information about the votes. This form no 45 should and must correspond, match and reconcile with form No 47 otherwise there is no legal importance of form 47 which is just a piece of paper. PTI as a party is claiming 183 plus seats in the centre on the basis of form No 45.

In the best interest of the country and democracy the mandate given by the masses should be respected and accepted otherwise its repercussions will be beyond description.

The nation is fully charged and fighting for there Democratic rights. I do hope common sense should prevail and there will be a just solution of this issue very soon realizing the gravity of the situation.