ISLAMABAD, Oct 20: Pakistan Muslim League (N) has demanded fresh elections on 90 seats of the National Assembly and 184 seats of all the four provincial assemblies. On all those seats candidates of the PML-Q and National Alliance had won elections.
PML-N Information Secretary Siddiqul Farooq told a press conference that the government, through its intelligence agencies, had carried out large-scale rigging to ensure the victory of the candidates of the pro-government PML-Q and National Alliance.
Issuing the first part of the white paper on the pre-poll rigging, Mr Farooq claimed that the government had planned to get the PML-Q and NA candidates elected on at least 120 seats of the National Assembly but the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal upset their plans.
“Gen Musharraf in his bid to concentrate all powers in his own hands, had used the resources of the ISI, MI and IB as well as the influence of provincial governors, ministers, police and civil administration and district Nazims to produce a hung parliament with an edge for his loyalist parties,” he said.
Mr Farooq claimed that before the elections, governors, particularly in Sindh and Punjab, had announced development schemes worth Rs80 billion. All those projects, he pointed out, had been initiated in the constituencies where the pro-government parties had fielded their candidates.
As part of the pre-poll rigging, he said, some 150 candidates of the PML-N and 50 of the People’s Party Parliamentarian were forced to change their loyalties.
He claimed that the advertisement campaign of the pro-government parties had been funded by the Inter-Service Intelligence.
He regretted that anonymous advertisement containing unethical and filthy language were used in the newspapers.
He said the pro-poll rigging started with the appointment of a controversial but docile chief election commissioner under whose leadership unqualified persons like Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi and Iftikhar Gilani were allowed to contest the elections.
