PESHAWAR, Feb 9: The president of the Shaheed Bhutto Foundation (SBF), Dr Kamal, has said that meddling in elections by the intelligence agencies must come to an end.

“All intelligence agencies must be barred by law from meddling in elections, making and breaking of political alliances and it should be declared a criminal offence, challengeable in a court, if any agency or military official is found involved in such activities,” he said in a letter written in response to Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani’s invitation given to the opposition parties in Lahore on Feb5 to give suggestions for making the forthcoming elections fair, free and transparent.

Dr Kamal said the invitation was an indication of a realisation that people had serious misgivings about the fairness of the forthcoming elections, which needed to be addressed.

“Denial of the right to choose can lead to a serious social and political upheaval,” he warned. He said the call for suggestions should also be extended to individuals and civil society organisations.

He said the People’s Democracy Institute (PDI), a subsidiary of the SBF, had carried out a study on how elections had been hijacked in the past.

He said “the Election Commission should be empowered to pay surprise visits to all monitoring centres set up by military and intelligence agencies, which should also be open to scrutiny and monitoring by civil society organisations.

Elections for the Senate “should be open or on the principle of priority list of candidates submitted by a party or group on the basis of the votes credited to the largest fraction,” he said.

“Approval of the appointment of the chief election commissioner and judges as members of the commission should be given by the Senate,” he said.