It came as no surprise that Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N won last year’s general elections — as was predicted by local and international surveys and foretold by various Pakistani and foreign media groups. Imran was fully satisfied with the arrangements made for the elections, including with the appointment of Justice Fakhrudding G. Ebrahim as chief election commissioner. Back then, he had complete trust in the office of the chief justice of Pakistan and had reposed faith in the electoral machinery. Not once before the election did Imran directly or indirectly express any concern over the possibility of electoral fraud on a massive scale — as he now claims. Be that as it may, Imran Khan now has a litany of allegations. Let’s consider them point-wise. Firstly, in order to convince the public that mass scale rigging took place in the May 2013 election, Imran has accused just about everyone and every institution of wrongdoing. He has blamed the then Chief Justice, Chief Election Commissioner, Chief of Army Staff and even the judges heading the election tribunals formed to look into rigging allegations. The four chief justices of the high courts appointed the high court judges who head the tribunals. As such, Imran is accusing all four honourable chief justices of the high courts of wrongdoing. In fact, he has consistently attacked the Supreme Court and accused it of collaborating in electoral fraud. No judge of the Supreme Court or high court has been spared Imran’s wrath. Next in the line of fire is the neutral caretaker government (except of course the one in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where the caretaker government comprised only men of integrity and honour, according to Imran). Then comes the media, of course led by Jang /Geo group, which according to Imran conspired to rig the elections. How they did this, Imran has never succeeded in explaining. Not just that, he has also forgotten that his party was given more airtime than all other parties during the election campaign even though PML-N was the leading party according to all surveys. Even the last hour of the election campaign was reserved for a PTI jalsa though the norm all over the democratic world is that the leading party (according to surveys/projections) is given the last hour or so of coverage. Secondly, Imran is crying foul about mass-scale rigging but only three complaints were filed for provincial assemblies. A total number of 563 seats were contested for the four provincial assemblies. Against this the total number of complaints filed by PTI candidates for electoral frauds is just three – yes three, which means PTI has no issues with the rest of the 560 seats. If there was any mass scale rigging as claimed by Imran, why did it not file rigging complaints for hundreds of other seats? If it is claiming that the mandate was “stolen”, surely there would be more than just three complaints? Thirdly, Imran complains that he has been denied justice by all institutions and hence has to take to the streets. PTI had filed a total of 58 complaints, the majority of which relate to National Assembly seats. Out of these, 39 have been disposed of by the election tribunals within one year of the election. Initially the period to dispose of the cases was 120 days, which was subsequently extended to another six months. This means that the election tribunals had to decide the rigging complaints before the end of April 2014 (initial four months plus the six month extension). The election tribunals had disposed of 73 % of the cases while the remaining are most likely to be completed in the near future. Imran says that he has been denied justice at all forums and therefore is going to Islamabad to topple the government. But justice has been delayed for just two months. How can a delay of two months be the reason for the removal of a government elected with clear majority? And that too when the government is not even responsible for the delay? Khan Sahib also complains that the Supreme Court has not taken suo moto action in the cases involving rigging. For his information, once the complaint is filed with the election tribunal, the Supreme Court cannot interfere. I wonder if the PTI legal team is simply not telling its boss the bare facts or if he is just refusing to listen to sane advice. Fourthly, there is the case of the “35 punctures”. According to Imran, there was mass-scale rigging in 35 constituencies in Punjab. In these constituencies, the difference between the winner and runner up is less than the number of rejected votes. Imran’s point is that if all these votes were not rejected, PTI would have won these seats. But perhaps the PTI chief is missing the main point: There are only six seats in which PTI was a runner up. So even if we concede that all the rejected votes in these six constituencies will go to PTI, it still just gets six more seats. So what is this myth of 35 punctures? The PML-N won just 12 of these 35 seats that Imran is speaking of; yet the way these so-called punctures are being presented makes it look like that PML-N has somehow been ‘gifted’ all 35 seats through a well planned conspiracy. Finally, let’s consider the myth of rejected votes. Imran has tried to give the impression that a significant number of votes were rejected all over the country and that this was another reason for his defeat. But actual data is quite contrary to what Imran has been claiming. Data shows that there was only a 0.4 percent increase in the number of rejected votes over 2008. Per 1000 votes, the actual number of rejected votes in 2013 was 32 compared to 28 in 2008. How can such a minor difference contribute to mass scale electoral fraud? All leading publications and survey groups, both local and international, predicted an outright victory for the PML-N. These included institutions like The Economist, Reuters, Gallup, and several others. The electoral process was monitored by several leading international and local organizations such as the US-based National Democratic Institute, the European Union, Fafen (according to Fafen report …2013 elections were by and large free and fair and transparent) and others. NDI and EU have been monitoring elections in Pakistan for the last several years and both concluded that the May 2013 elections were fairer than any previous election. In a recent talk show, Imran was asked why his polling agents did not object to the mass scale rigging he now talks about. His answer: because the PTI was not prepared for the elections and the polling agents had not been properly trained. Whose responsibility was this? Just on this count alone, Imran ought to step down as chairman of the PTI.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 23:41:10 +0000
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