Irshadullah Khan
PESHAWAR: MNA Abdul Latif of Chitral on Wednesday demanded that the chief election commissioner, Sikendar Sultan Raja, should resign after failing to conduct free and fair elections in the country.
Speaking at a press conference here, the PTI MNA said that the failure of the election commission in its primary responsibility had also exposed the whole system under which the process of the elections from the start till the allocation of the reserved seats was manipulated to push the PTI to the wall.
He said before the elections the symbol of the PTI was taken back by the Election Commission of Pakistan with the objective of depriving the party of its right to get reserved seats.
Over 77 reserved seats that were the right of the PTI have now been doled out to other parties in national and provincial assemblies.
The PTI has challenged the election commission\’s decision in the Peshawar High Court which on Wednesday restrained the speaker of the KP assembly from administering oath to the minority and woman reserved seats till Thursday.
The Chitral MNA said those rejected by the voters had been brought to the assemblies through manipulation of the election results and now reserved seats of the PTI were also doled out to the rejected political parties.
\”We will not accept this, we will continue raising the issue in national and provincial assemblies and also protest outside parliament, on roads, because public mandate has been stolen and this is a daylight robbery on people\’s rights.\”
He said the PTI was being told that Pakistan cannot afford confrontation as the country was passing through a critical phase. I say Pakistan is always brought to such a critical point.
Imran Khan was put in jail and people of Pakistan in order to steer the country out of the critical phase overwhelmingly voted for the PTI and elected 180 members to the National Assembly, but the public mandate was stolen, he added.
The MNA said that not only the PTI but many other parties were acknowledging the record breaking rigging in the Feb 8 elections in which the Election Commission had become a party and openly worked against the PTI.
He said if the election commissioner had an iota of courage, he should step down to save the image of the institution in the eyes of the public.