LAHORE:  A leading Pakistani human rights watchdog has expressed serious concerns over what it terms the systematic attempts to exclude candidates from elections and to sabotage people’s ability to elect candidates of their choice or to hold them to account.

“It is manifestly clear now that the latest process of scrutiny of candidates is a witch-hunt aimed at harassing and humiliating candidates,” the Executive council of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said in a statement on Saturday. “It undermines the essence of what democracy entails and shows a complete lack of faith in the people’s right and ability to choose their representatives.”

Several candidates for the coming general elections, scheduled for May 11, have complained of being bombarded with inappropriate and provoking questions during scrutiny of candidacy paper, with some queries relating to religious text and others to personal issues.

For the second time this week, the HRCP slammed the conduct of the returning officers in the scrutiny process of nomination papers of electoral candidates.

“The completely arbitrary barring of candidates by returning officers at this scale cannot be without instructions and encouragement to take this tack. HRCP sees a clear and systematic sabotage of the democratic process to make the will of the people completely irrelevant,” read the statement.

The statement also likened the recent events in the electoral process to the ‘agenda’ of former military ruler Ziaul Haq.

“This deliberate and planned abuse of the process appears to be a bid to complete Ziaul Haq’s agenda to accommodate extremism into mainstream politics and to thrust theocratic rule down people’s throats,” said the statement.

On Friday, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain criticised the manner in which returning officers were undertaking scrutiny of electoral candidates, calling it an attempt to disqualify them, and thus creating doubts about the timely holding of the elections.

In the statement, the HRCP called on other political leaders as well as the civil society to also freely express their opinions regarding the scrutiny process.

“HRCP calls upon the political parties and the civil society to vigilantly guard against these latest attempts to liquidate democracy in Pakistan and resolutely reject any and all bids to delay elections under any pretext or to introduce unrepresentative rule,” it said.

“[The] HRCP also calls upon all political leadership to express their opinion openly on this devious plan of enforcing selective rule of a few so-called angels on Pakistan’s fate. The sole voice denouncing such tendency has come from the head of only one political party. Others too need to shed their fear and speak up at this critical moment.”

It also called on the Election Commission to intervene and stop “the asymmetric warfare on the electoral process.”