The ECP must step forward to address the allegations
While the elections in the country have largely been conducted well, there have been too many exceptions to ignore. Allegations of rigging, abduction of polling staff, tearing off of ballot papers and stealing of ballot papers and boxes, and unnecessary and unexplainable delay in announcing results in some constituencies are among some of the issues that have raised quite a few eyebrows. In fact, that would be an understatement seeing how the people of Karachi and Lahore, and politicians in Sindh, have gathered in protest.
Protest is a democratic right of every citizen. They must lodge protest if they think they have been wronged in any way, but this does not give them any right to try and hijack the whole process. Fiery outbursts of MQM chief Altaf Hussain, laced with threats of going to war with anyone who propagates against his party, detaching Karachi from the rest of the country if the ‘establishment’ didn’t like his party’s mandate. Threatening the ECP that it won’t be able to find shelter if it didn’t deal with the situation fairly, he went ahead and said that the entire country would engulf in the fire they were playing with. Protests should also not translate into a show of power in the streets, like what is happening in Karachi and Lahore where the supporters of different political parties have gathered at Teen Talwar Chowk and Lalik Chowk, respectively, to register their protest against rigging in NA 250 in Karachi and NA 125 in Lahore. Similar allegations of rigging and violence have also been levelled by PPP candidates in Thatta, Sindh. Incidents in a few polling stations should not lead to casting doubts about the entire elections which have been the freest and fairest of all held so far.
There have been a number of videos doing the circles clearly showing rigging in some constituencies but instead of using them as a tool to incite the public, parties must take the course of law and file complaints with the ECP. The ECP, on its part, must look into what went wrong at so many, 42 to be exact, polling stations where they had to stop polling. Also in the presence of damning evidence of rigging, it should listen to the parties and their workers, and find an urgent solution to avoid getting a label of an incompetent organisation. The HRCP has issued a lengthy report on the elections, which it found “poorly managed”, and has advised a number of steps to improve the situation for by-polls and the next general polls. Level playing field for all parties, violence, rigging, threats of violence, deaths related to the polls, security, expenses on elections, unnecessary delay in announcing results, training of the polling staff, lack of infrastructure facilities and a lack of communication system between the polling staff and the ECP have been pointed as some of the biggest challenges yet to be tackled. Unless the ECP steps forward, and in a big way, doubts will continue to linger on regarding the credibility of elections, at least in certain constituencies.
