General elections 2013: ECP snubs rigging allegations

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ISLAMABAD: 

The Election Commission of Pakistan on Wednesday rebutted rigging allegations of its former additional secretary and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf deeming them ‘baseless’.

A meeting of the electoral body, held under the leadership of the Acting Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan, Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali was attended by members including Justice (r) Riaz Kayani, Justice (r) Shazad Akbar Khan and Justice (r) Fazalur Rehman. Ishtiak Ahmad Khan, Secretary Election Commission was also present in the meeting.

The commission deliberated upon allegations levelled by the PTI chairman Imran Khan and former additional secretary ECP Muhammad Afzal Khan, a statement by the media office of the electoral body stated.

Rejecting all the allegations as baseless and without substance, the commission deemed it appropriate to remind the nation of the difficult circumstances the May 2013 general elections were held under, which led to the first peaceful transition of power from one civilian government to another.

The commission observed that a large number of electoral reforms were introduced to ensure that elections were held justly, fairly and honestly. Consequently, keen interest was shown in observing the elections in Pakistan.

The Election Observer Missions of Japan, International Human Rights Commission, European Union Observation Mission, NDI, Common Wealth observers, Gender Concerns International visited various constituencies and after the poll, they all declared the general elections 2013 as free, fair, credible and successful and they also made some observations and recommendations.

Regarding the appointment of officials of judges as returning officers, ECP noted that during a consultative meeting with major political parties in September 2012, the political parties had themselves requested for the appointment of officers from within the judiciary to act as DROs, ROs in general elections-2013 and  resultantly the ECP as a whole requested the former  chief justice. This was followed by another similar letter written by the former Chief Election Commissioner Justice (r) Fakhruddin G Ebrahim to Chief Justice of Pakistan.

It is worthwhile to mention here that in the Judicial Policy 2009, it had been clearly decided that judiciary will not be part of any electoral process. However, upon the requests made by the ECP, the National Judicial Policy Forum comprising the four chief justices of high courts headed by the chief justice considered the request of the ECP as well as that of political parties and allowed the judicial officers to be part of electoral process.

Regarding the allegations of printing extra ballot papers on May 9 2013, the commission observed that the allegation carried no weight as PEC Punjab Mehboob Anwar had clearly denied the allegations in his statement that is reproduced, “I, Mehboob Anwar, PEC Punjab, hereby vehemently rebut the allegations leveled against me as totally baseless, frivolous and without any substance. I did my duty with clean hands. I categorically deny and state that not even a single ballot paper was got printed from any private printing press by me, as alleged.”