ISLAMABAD, Nov 22: The government in Pakistan distorted its own devolution plan by manipulating the recent local bodies’ elections to weaken the mainstream opposition parties and control parliament and the presidency in 2007 and beyond. The observations have been made in the latest report of the International Crisis Group (ICG) “Pakistan’s Local Polls: Shoring up Military Rule”.

The group has demanded that the US and other nations should withdraw their support from the “regime” unless it takes “genuine steps” to restore a civilian rule.

It says the ‘deeply flawed’ local elections were marred by serious violence, which “may well become worse in future polls as extremists are bolstered”.

“The military regime distorted its own devolution plan through the manipulated polls in order to ensure that its supporters won, to weaken further the mainstream opposition parties, and to set the stage for maintaining control of parliament and the presidency in 2007 and beyond,” said Samina Ahmed, the group’s project director for South Asia in a statement.

“By doing so, it (the military regime) only increased the political space for extremist jihadi organisations,” she said.

The report states that the elections were fundamentally flawed due to government manipulation.

The manipulation included gerrymandering of districts to split support for political opponents of the military; reshuffling supervisory officials to ensure those favourable to the military controlled elections; rejecting the nominations of opposition candidates; giving direct support to certain candidates even though the elections were supposed to be “non-party”; and direct rigging, including ballot stuffing, intimidation and seizure of voting stations.

“As the military-led government enters its sixth year, regime survival has become even more its imperative,” the report observes.

Four years after the devolution plan was implemented, local governments have gained only nominal autonomy. The military-controlled centre has restricted the scheme to selective distribution of state resources and authority, the report says.

“This political engineering is increasing divisions at local and provincial levels which, in turn, are producing greater political violence,” said Robert Templer, Director of Crisis Group’s Asia Programme.