NOWSHERA/LAHORE, Dec 15: Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad has claimed that the government plans massive rigging before and during polling, saying that the government has already formulated the election results.

He was talking to media personnel at the district courts in Nowshera on Saturday, where he and other party leaders had gone to withdraw their nomination papers.

It was learnt that 165 JI candidates for the National Assembly and 431 party candidates contesting provincial assembly seats withdrew their nomination papers.

Highest number of withdrawals in the NWFP were reported from Swabi, where 99 candidates declined to run in elections. Thirty-nine people pulled out of the electoral race in Chitral, 31 in Peshawar, 19 in Khyber Agency, 18 in Timergara and 10 in Swat.

Several JI leaders, including Liaquat Baloch and Farid Ahmad Piracha also withdrew nomination papers in Lahore.

Qazi Hussain said that casting ballots on Jan 8 was a mere eye-wash. He said: “Pre- and post-poll rigging … will be unprecedented and that is why the JI has decided to boycott the sham elections,” he said.

“President Musharraf has assaulted the judiciary’s independence by deposing the chief justice and other judges who refused to take oath under the Provisional Constitution Order, and appointed people of his own choice to create a docile judiciary,” he said.

The situation would normalise if the president lifted the emergency, restored the constitution and reinstated the deposed judges, he said.

“Pre-poll rigging is evident from appointment of caretaker governments and a controversial Election Commission and campaigning for the king’s party candidates on the state-run television, costing millions of rupees to the public exchequer,” he said.

JI leaders who withdrew their nomination papers in Nowshera included Asif Luqman Qazi, Merajuddin, Shahid Hassan Shah and Nadir Shah.

Meanwhile, JI’s provincial Amir Sirajul Haq said that President Pervez Musharraf has become “Hamid Karzai for the United States in Pakistan”.

He said this while addressing a public meeting in Samar Bagh in Lower Dir district after withdrawing his nomination papers, according to a press release issued in Nowshera on Saturday.

He said that the JI and the APDM and the lawyers would continue to protest till the ouster of the government and the restoration of the pre-Nov 3 judiciary.

Terming elections a conspiracy against the solidarity and integrity of the country, he said that President Musharraf, like Hamid Karzai, wanted to turn Pakistan into another Afghanistan. He said that PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto had also hinted at allowing US strikes inside the country.

In Lahore, Liaquat Baloch resolved to launch a movement for the restoration of judiciary and the rule of law.

JI members who withdrew nomination papers in Lahore included Saeed Iqbal, Safdar Sheikh, Zahoor Wattoo, Anwar Gondal, Shahid Naveed Malik, Ehsanullah Waqas, Abid Mir, Amirul Azim and Chaudhry Shaukat Ali.

APDM candidates withdrawing nomination papers in Quetta included Dr Hamid Khan Achakzai, Nawab Ayaz Khan Jogezai, Dr Kaleemullah, Rauf Lala, Abdul Reahim Ziaratwal, Abdul Majeed Achakzai, Abdul Rauf Mengal and Akbar Mengal.