ISLAMABAD, Sept 4: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has launched a campaign to apprise international community of alleged pre-poll rigging and other measures adopted by the military regime to keep Benazir Bhutto, the twice-elected prime minister, out of the polls, party sources said on Wednesday.
Two letters were sent by acting secretary general of the PPP, Mian Raza Rabbani, on Tuesday to the ambassador of the United States, Nancy Powell, and director of National Democratic Institute (NDI), Mary Cummins, stating the party’s concerns about the outcome of the upcoming elections and restoration of “true democratic process” in the country.
These letters followed a memorandum, delivered by the party workers, to British Prime Minister Tony Blair at his official residence in London on Monday.
In the letter sent to Nancy Powell, Mr Rabbani expressed the party’s reservations about what he termed as “duality of approach” in the US policy towards Pakistani politics.
However, the letter addressed to NDI director remained confined to the flaws in vote count procedure. Rabbani claimed that the procedure had also been used in the previous elections to facilitate “rigging and altering” the results on a massive scale.
In the letter sent to US ambassador, he referred to the comments, “we do not pick particular candidates or support particular individuals,” made by a state department spokesman in response to a question about Benazir Bhutto.
He reminded the US envoy that during the trial of Nawaz Sharif the state department had, on a number of occasions, expressed its apprehensions and desire for a free and fair trial besides monitoring the same very closely.
“PPP hopes for a similar concern and would like to understand why there is a duality of approach,” he said.
Regarding the “illegal and unconstitutional” exclusion of Benazir Bhutto from elections by the military regime, he wrote: “Moreover, the United States supports the holding of fair elections. With the regime impeding Ms Bhutto from contesting and denying her free movement given that she is the front runner in the forthcoming elections, makes a mockery of the process.
“Ms Bhutto can contest under the Constitution. Benazir-specific laws, made to debar her, demonstrate the fear that the military regime has of democracy and the people’s choice.”
Mr Rabbani, in the letter addressed to NDI director, explained in detail how elections in the past were rigged through the vote count procedure.
He stated that elections results, before final compilation, were collected in three different stages. “It is during this collection and transfer period, when district returning officers have to send the results to the provincial election commissions, which in turn send the same to the Election Commission, that the rigging begins,” he added.
The final vote count, he said, was conducted at the Election Commission in the absence of candidates and their agents. “Votes are changed and stolen.” He recalled that same method was adopted in rigging the 1997 elections, where observers said the turnout was 16 per cent while the EC announced that nearly 50 per cent vote had been cast in Punjab.
He said the company which had been assigned to computerise the count, reportedly called Nestol, was managed by a minister. “There is a direct conflict of interest with a sitting minister benefiting from cabinet contracts,” he said.