December 18, 2007	Tuesday	Zilhaj 7, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Dec 17: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has expressed concern over alleged repeated attempts at pre-poll rigging by candidates belonging to Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) and the caretaker regime as the election commission moves at a snail’s pace to answer piles of complaints filed by the party in the run-up to the Jan 8 elections.

Peoples Party central information secretary Sherry Rehman in a statement here on Monday said if the country was to be saved from street violence in the next six months, every effort had to be made to ensure that the elections were free and fair.

“Eight years of one-man rule has fuelled enough restlessness in the country. We cannot afford another rigged election, giving way to a puppet regime that would get another five years to play with the fate of the country,” she added.

Ms Rehman alleged that the administrations in Dera Bugti, Gujrat and Jacobabad had broken all previous records to influence the polls, even going to the extent of resorting to violence. “Incidents in Gujrat, Jacobabad and Dera Bugti are just the tip of the iceberg,” she said, adding the PPP had lodged over 1,100 complaints related to pre-poll rigging from across Pakistan with the ECP so far, but no notice had been taken of the havoc that the nazims were wreaking on the ground with control over state funds and guns.

She said the PPP had protested the use of improvised polling stations that had no known addresses because these stations were used for padding the vote against the opposition, but no action had been taken. She said it was highly deplorable that the Musharraf regime and the caretaker government, that was essentially an extension of the PML-Q, had been using public money to manipulate polls that would decide the future of tax- paying citizens. “Pakistan can no longer afford a distortion of the political process created by rigged polls and tailored democracy,” she said.

She warned against a manipulated election and said any attempt to impose an establishment-desired set-up was most likely to backfire, as people had paid enough for the ‘visionary’ policies of the PML-Q government.