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| December 20, 2006 | Wednesday | Ziqa'ad 28, 1427 |
Election observers due in February
ISLAMABAD, Dec 19: The first team of foreign observers and experts will visit Pakistan in February 2007 to observe the environment ahead of the forthcoming general election on the demand of the opposition parties.
Deputy information secretary of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) Munir Ahmed Khan told Dawn here on Tuesday after a series of meetings with diplomats from various countries and the country director of National Democratic Institute (NDI) of the US.
Mr Khan said the foreign team would be visiting Pakistan to witness the ‘pre-poll rigging’ that had already been started by the regime.
He said NDI country director Sheila Fruman had informed him that a four-member team would visit Pakistan from February 13 to 19 to examine and assess the pre-election environment in the country.
The team will comprise Warner Mark, a former governor of Virginia; Nora Owen, a member of Ireland’s Parliament; Peter Manikas, regional director NDI; and Sheila Fruman, NDI’s country director in Pakistan.
The team members will meet leaders and representatives of the political parties and government officials during their visit.Mr Khan said that he had held separate meetings with Ralph Anske, Simon Moore and Sylien Riquire, the diplomats of US, Australia and France, respectively, and all of them had assured him that they would urge the donor countries to put pressure on the Pakistan government and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to ensure free, fair and transparent elections.
Mr Khan apprised the diplomats and the NDI official of the concerns of opposition parties about the next general elections. He told them that it would be useless if the foreign observers visited the country after the announcement of election schedule or on the polling day as the pre-poll rigging had already started.
He said President General Pervez Musharraf had been presiding over meetings of the ruling PML and addressing public meetings.
The ARD leader said the next elections were crucial for the very existence of the country.
He regretted that political parties were not being involved in the ongoing process of voters' registration. He feared that due to the ‘faulty system’ of the ECP, over 10 million eligible voters would be deprived of their right to vote.
Besides voters' registration process, the political parties must also be involved in the possible delimitation of constituencies, appointment of election staff and setting up of polling stations, he said.
He also stressed the need for dissolving all district governments and freezing development funds before the election. He alleged that the government had already started utilisation of development funds in the constituencies of probable candidates of the ruling party and its coalition partners.
He alleged that the government had allocated job quotas to the probable ruling party candidates. He said the opposition believed that election could not be held in a free and fair manner if the exiled former prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, were not allowed to participate in it.
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