Pakistan Muslim League (PML) leader Pervaiz Elahi has said that elections 2013 were hijacked and a judicial commission should be form to try ‘hijackers’ for breaking the constitution and trampling the mandate of the people.
He said this while addressing a press conference at the Muslim League House on Friday. Kamil Ali Agha, Tariq Bashir Cheema, Muhammad Basharat Raja, Zaheeruddin Khan, Hafiz Ammar Yasir, Ahmad Yar Heraj, Dr Azeemuddin Zahid Lakhvi, Ch Altaf Hussain, Qamar Hauat Kathia, Muhammad Khan Leghari, Seemal Kamran, Syeda Majida Zaidi, Kanwal Nasim and other leaders were also present.
He said holding of election was taken over by former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry instead of the chief election commissioner and the results were announced by Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif, election staff and the returning officers were being controlled by some people including a “veiled personality” sitting in GOR Lahore. He said, “Biggest target of rigging was Punjab and our party, our votes were rejected and our 44 seats snatched away, our party was first to raise voice against rigging in the last by-election held on December 4, 2013 and again in the general elections of 2013.”
Earlier meeting of PML MNAs, MPAs, senators, leaders and legal experts was held under the chairmanship of PML President Shujaat Hussain at his residence.
In the meeting it was unanimously decided regarding May 11 that the PML extends full moral support to the protest of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and mission of Dr Tahirul Qadri and PML delegations would also participate in their rallies/protest.
Pervaiz Elahi said that by involving the judiciary in the election process the former chief justice had openly violated the Judicial Policy 2009 issued with his signatures that in future, judiciary will not be involved in the judicial process, not only this instead of the chief election commissioner the chief justice had been giving verbal and written instructions to the returning officers, the chief election commissioner had announced on March 28, 2013 after meeting with delegations of all political parties that all institutions should refrain from interference in the elections but the former chief justice by issuing a special letter from district to assistant returning officers started interfering in the election contrary to the direction of the CEC who was responsible for holding of the election under the constitution, held closed-door meetings and addressed returning officers by visiting Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta on which the lawyers bodies, including the Pakistan Bar Council and the Supreme Court Bar Association had protested.
He said further that the task of announcing the election results was assumed by Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif and just when only 15 to 20 percent counting was completed they announced their victory at 11:30pm.
He also said that all this work was being done in the rooms of the returning officers and entry of the candidates was prohibited, “I have been contesting elections since 1985 but never entry has been banned in the history of the elections. Record number of votes were rejected this time and through this action only our party was deprived of 15 seats of the National Assembly and 29 provincial seats. FAFEN also supported our stance that by changing the polling stations in the last days without information results of 93 constituencies of the National Assembly were affected while the time for polling was unilaterally extended, PML-N’s fake votes were also counted and in Sargodha on one polling station of Nawaz Sharif 8000 votes were counted whereas total votes there were just 1530.”
