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| October 4, 2005 | Tuesday | Sha’aban 29, 1426 |
LB polls lose credibility
FAISALABAD, Oct 3: The local elections have lost all its credibility as votes of councillors are on sale in all the eight towns of the district. According to information gleaned by this correspondent from all towns — Lyallpur, Iqbal, Jinnah, Madina, Samundri, Tandlianwala, Chak Jhumra and Jaranwala — nominees supported by the ruling party as well as opposition alliances are overtly involved in bargaining the elected councillors and nazims for mustering their support.
Affluent candidates for almost all towns and even the city district nazimship are paying Rs20,000 to Rs30,000 to a councillor while Rs40,000 to Rs50,000 are being paid to a nazim in four towns of urban areas.
While in towns based on villages and rural area, the rate of a councillor is Rs10,000 and most of the payments are being made in bulk through nazims and naib nazims.
Candidates for top slots of towns and city district have reportedly hired the services of trained ‘brokers’, who are visiting houses of councillors and paying for their ‘loyalty’ in shape of hard cash.
In some cases, candidates are distributing costly gifts like wristwatches, gold chains and rings and cell phones among voters. The local police have rounded up three supporters of a town nazim candidate when they were allegedly offering bribe to a councillor.
Political pundits said this nasty trend in the local government system would open a new era of corruption for the elected nazims would be left with no option but to misappropriate funds to cover their election expenditures.
Requesting anonymity, a town nazim candidate said that he had launched his election campaign through personal links but failed to get support of councillors. As a last resort, he said councillors were being paid handsomely.
Some of candidates for the town nazim and city district’s top slot have collected hundreds of cards issued by the election commission to councillors and these would be provided to eligible voters just before polling.
While some of councillors have also been sent to hill stations on ‘enjoyment trip’ by candidates after purchasing of their votes so that they could nkot contact their opponents before polling.
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