ISLAMABAD, Sept 3: Chairperson PPP, Benazir Bhutto, has called upon the Chief Election Commissioner, Justice (retd) Irshad Hasan Khan to ensure free, fair and transparent elections by adopting a transparent vote-counting procedure and propose punishment for the election officials failing to perform their duties.

In a letter addressed to the CEC, the former prime minister expressed her reservations about vote-counting in the past elections when the elections were rigged.

She stated: “There is a lack of clarity about the declaration that the returning officers of every constituency would announce the election results locally.

“The manual of the returning officer upon which the count will be based continues to state that the final count will be announced after the votes are taken into the dark tunnel outside the watchful eyes of the candidates and their representatives in the provincial election commissions. This is where rigging begins after the conclusion of the vote.

“There are two important counts. First the count by the presiding officer who must give the results as prescribed by law. He often does not do that since there is no punishment for him to break the law. The data or lack thereof on presiding officers being penalized for refusing to give the proper certificate of the count proves this contention.

“The second count is at the returning officers where the boxes are to be opened, results counted and announced before the witnesses.

“Since the rigging of elections began, the new procedure was adopted, of having the final count taken place outside the eyes of candidates and their agents in the third place, namely the provincial election commissions. This is where boxes are changed and votes hacked in. Faxes too can be changed to change the final result.”

She further apprised the CEC about the way the rigging is carried out during vote count and wrote: “Summing up on the basis of carbonized copies is insufficient and opens wide the door for rigging. The returning officer can be summing up all the wrong counts. The returning officer must open all the ballot boxes in the presence of the candidates and do the vote compilation in their presence during the second and final count.”

Expressing her concerns regarding rigging during the counting process, she wrote: “I am unable to understand the insistence on having the final count down outside the watchful eye of the candidates. It is my concern that the sanctity of the ballot is violated when the ballot enters a dark tunnel and the final count is done in secrecy in the darkness of that tunnel.

“I again emphasized that if the returning offices can be empowered to do an informal count. Experience teaches us that the only ballot count that had sanctity in Pakistan was the ballot count of 1985 and 1988 in the presence of candidates before returning officers immediately upon conclusion of the election.”