KARACHI: Accusing the provincial election authorities of tampering with the voter list of Karachi to serve political interest of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan on Wednesday demanded that the Sindh Election Commissioner be removed immediately.

The party also warned that it would not accept the results of any elections until the issues related with electoral rolls were fixed.

Addressing a press conference at the party’s temporary headquarters in Bahadurabad, senior MQM-P leader Syed Mustafa Kamal was visibly angry when he blamed both the PPP and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for ‘abusing powers’ to benefit certain political entities and damage others.

“We have documented proof of all wrongdoings and we demand the ECP to move before it’s too late. We can’t let anyone steal the mandate of people of Karachi. This is pre-poll rigging. This is not democracy. This is even worse than dictatorship,” he said.

Demands removal of Sindh election commissioner for ‘manipulating urban vote to appease PPP’

“It’s the men of Election Commission who are toeing the line of PPP and deliberately manipulating hundreds of thousands of votes before the next general elections,” he said.

“They both [PPP and ECP] are playing with the political future of Karachi and urban areas of Sindh. I appeal to the chief election commissioner to take notice of illegal activities of the provincial election commission.”

The MQM leader referred to ‘reliable information’ about a ‘conspiracy’ under which votes of hundreds of thousands of people living in Karachi were shifted from their current places of residence to far-flung areas just to keep them away from voting in the next general election.

Similarly, he said, the voter list ‘solely of urban Sindh’ was being manipulated on different ‘technical grounds’ that would only benefit the PPP. “And for this purpose dedicated staff of the ECP in Sindh region has been deputed. These ECP men are serving against democracy and interest of the common man,” said Mr Kamal.

He said that the ECP had made the process of transfer of vote and registration of new vote extremely difficult that would deprive a large number of people of exercising their right of franchise.

Talking about the newly-formed local government in Karachi and other parts of Sindh, Mr Kamal questioned the legitimacy of the fresh system and again called it “disappointing performance” of the ECP which failed to protect the electoral mandate of the country’s biggest city.

“The parties even those which contested would accept one day that the MQM-P’s decision [to boycott the local government elections] was right,” he said.

“Those contested the polls despite knowing the exploitation, injustice and illegal process of all this exercise would be rejected by the people of Karachi. They in fact have sold out their political future. The people of Karachi would never accept them as their true representatives,” he said.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2023