The party claimed that a large number of people in major cities and towns, including Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Multan, participated in the ‘referendum’ and, according to preliminary results, rejected the US aid bill by a big margin.

Final results, it said, would be announced by the JI’s secretary-general and ‘chief referendum commissioner’ Liaquat Baloch on Saturday.

The JI said it had printed ‘45 million ballot papers’ – ‘Kerry-Lugar Bill – People’s referendum’ – containing five points, on the pattern of the referendum held by Gen Ziaul Haq.

The ‘ballot paper’ read: ‘It (the Kerry-Lugar bill) is a charge-sheet against country’s sensitive agencies’;

‘It is an American attempt to capture Pakistans nuclear assets’; and

‘Is aimed at spreading terror through American security agency Blackwater to continue the massacre of innocent people by American drone attacks and the extension of the American embassy (converting it) into a cantonment.’

‘Voters’ were asked to put a tick-mark on ‘I reject Kerry-Lugar bill’ or ‘I don’t reject Kerry-Lugar bill’.

According to a press release, JI Amir Syed Munawar Hasan, Liaquat Baloch, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Prof Ghafoor Ahmad, Sirajul Haq and Asadullah Bhutto ‘voted’ in the ‘referendum’. Munawar Hasan said that people would continue their peaceful protests against the government’s pro-US policies and claimed that after South Waziristan, the government ‘is preparing for operations in Muridke … and Quetta’. Mr Baloch said that the ‘massive rejection’ of the US bill was ‘a slap in face of rulers’ who had bulldozed parliament’s proceedings.

Inamullah Khattack adds from Rawalpindi:

Voters could cast votes on behalf of their entire family and more than once. A large number of people who participated in the exercise, particularly the less educated among them, did not know what the Kerry-Lugar bill contained.

In a ‘referendum’ camp at the Dhoke Kashmirian Chowk, organisers were seen asking simple people to mark the ‘No’ option.

A number of people interviewed by this reporter said they had voted in favour of the bill. Most of the polling camps were set up outside mosques.

The referendum was also held in Attock, Peshawar, Dir Lower, Swabi, Chitral and Buner.