ISLAMABAD, Jan 25: A 36-point document was presented to the Chief Election Commissioner Justice (Retd) Qazi Mohammad Farooq on Thursday by a delegation of the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians. The paper is aimed at ensuring fair and free elections in the country.
The PPP leaders told reporters that they had formulated the paper keeping in mind their experiences in the presidential referendum of 2002 and local government polls. They feared massive rigging in the next elections, they said.
The delegation included the PPP secretary-general Raja Pervez Ashraf, Senator Sardar Latif Khosa, its president for Punjab Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Sindh president Syed Qaim Ali Shah, the NWFP president Rahim Dad Khan and information secretary Sherry Rehman.
Sherry Rehman said despite all their concerns and reservations, the party would not leave the field open to the government to manipulate elections. “If our demands were not met then the election campaign can turn into a protest movement,” remarked Ms Rehman.
The party has received a report wherein 150 army captains have been inducted in police with the plan to rig elections through identity theft, said Ms Rehman. She claimed the army men would be deputed in place of deputy returning officers.
Replying to a question, the PPP leaders said they have also provided to the CEC the list of those 150 who have been inducted on a three-year contract in the police.
The PPP also explained the role of intelligence agencies during elections in making and breaking the political parties. Agencies manipulate polls and as such the Military Intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence and the Intelligence Bureau should be barred from meddling in elections, asked the paper adding, rigging should be made a criminal offence by a civil court if a military or intelligence official was found involved in it. A copy of it was made available to Dawn.
All monitoring centres should be disbanded and if these were not then the CEC should be empowered to visit all such centres set up by the military and intelligence agencies, it said.
The head of the IB should be a neutral and respected police officer and its senior and provincial officers too, should not belong to military. The political wing of the ISI and other military intelligence should be stopped from holding meetings with the political leaders and interfering in electoral process, it suggested.
The PPP also called for transparent ballot boxes to ensure no pre-filling of these boxes. Highlighting the flaws in voters' registration process, the party feared chances of disfranchising a large number of voters and advised updating the list of 2002.
Advocating multiple identification system, it said, voters should be allowed to identify themselves through passport, driving license, arms license etc.
The PPP also proposed to put district, session and civil judges under the control of Election Commission of Pakistan during elections and further recommended appointing only federal government employees in BPS-17 as presiding officers.
The CEC had been asked to stop the practice of carving up districts in order to break the established constituencies of political rivals. A boundary commission on the UK model should be established to restore constituencies to non-ethnic and non-parochial criteria and on comparative population sizes, said the PPP paper.
It also asked the CEC to impose a "strict ban on the use of state resources for election campaigning" and take a suo moto notice of abuses by the ministers or parliamentarians. It drew the attention towards setting up of ghost polling stations at the last moment, with no one knowing whether they were real or virtual.
Supporting parallel vote count method, it said: "Parallel vote count by international observers, the National Democratic Institute or any NGO was necessary to ensure that the mandate of the masses was not subverted.
During the briefing, Senator Latif Khosa said the CEC had the power to stop Gen Musharraf from attending public meetings and campaigning for the Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q).
Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the CEC had promised to invite them again after going through the 36-point paper. He said the caretaker set-up before the elections would determine the fairness of elections.
He said a great responsibility was on the shoulders of the CEC to save the country from plunging into a chaos.
ISLAMABAD, Jan 25: A 36-point document was presented to the Chief Election Commissioner Justice (Retd) Qazi Mohammad Farooq on Thursday by a delegation of the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians. The paper is aimed at ensuring fair and free elections in the country.
