PESHAWAR: The majority of losing candidates, particularly those belonging to the five-party religio-political alliance, Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Pakistan People’s Party and Awami National Party on Thursday alleged that they lost due to “organised rigging”
Maulana Amanullah Haqqani, the former minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and MMA’s candidate for the provincial legislative assembly from PK-73 Peshawar, termed the election as “Pakistan’s worst and dirtiest pol?ls”. “I haven’t seen such a worst and dirtiest election in the history of Pakistan. And unfortunately our army did this job to bring a particular political party ?into power,” the MMA candidate alleged.
He said the military controlled the entire election process. He claimed that presiding officers were helpless before the security people at the polling stations.
“In many places, our party supporters and agents were not allowed to enter the polling stations. The people from the army created unnecessary hurdles for our people and wanted them not to enter the polling stations,” he alleged.
He said on the other hand, supporters and polling agents of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf were given access everywhere in the polling stations.
“Despite the fact that our polling agents, including females, had letters from the Election Commission, they were not allowed to enter the polling station,” he complained. He said the PTI supporters were even allowed to convince voters in their favour inside the polling stations.
And when the polling was over, Maulana Amanullah Haqqani alleged, all the polling agents were expelled from the polling booths and the army men took control of the ballot boxes. “After whatever they wanted to do, the polling agents were given access inside the polling ?booths and counting process was started,” said the MMA candidate, who lost to PTI candidate Taimur Saleem Jhagra by a huge margin.
“They didn’t allow anyone, including the candidates to carry mobile phones inside the polling booths. The army didn’t want people to take pictures of what they were doing inside the polling booths,” argued Haqqani. He said at many places, their polling agents were not given form No 45 and results were handed over to them on plain paper.
“The most unfortunate fact is that this dirtiest rigging has been done in supervision of our army. We have called the All Parties Conference to chalk out the future strategy against the shameful rigging,” he added.
Former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa senior minister and Pakistan People’s Party ex-provincial chief, Rahimdad Khan also levelled similar allegations of the election process.
“It was an interesting election of my life in which all the powers were given to the army and even the presiding officers were helpless,” he said.
He said their polling agents were unnecessarily stopped from ?entering the polling booths while their opponents were facilitated and given access everywhere. “Our rivals were even purchasing votes in and outside ?the polling stations. I informed the presiding officers but they didn’t take any action,” the PPP leader maintained.
“We actually felt two days ago that something was wrong, but we didn’t want to create any issue that could have sabotaged the election process or created law and order situation,” said the elderly politician.
“Interestingly, when the voting process was over, the military authorities expelled all the polling agents and then power supply was disconnected. After an hour the polling agents were called back inside the polling booths one by one for counting the ballots. In my decades-long politics, I have never seen these types of suspicious activities in the election,” he argued.
?Dr Attaur Rahman, former member of Pakistan’s National Assembly and senior leader of Jamaat-e-Islami who was MMA candidate in Mardan district recorded similar complaints.
“I have contested elections a number of times but will always remember this one for the rest of my life. In many areas, our polling agents and workers were prevented from entering the polling stations. I don’t know why they were so scared of other political parties and their workers,” said Dr Attaur Rahman.
“I was a candidate for the National Assembly and I was not allowed by the army to visit a polling station. Now you can better imagine what common voters and party supporters would have faced there,” said the JI leader who lost to PTI candidate Mujahid Ali.
“People started congratulating us in the evening, but soon after the voting process was completed, our polling agents were expelled from polling booths,” Dr Attaur Rahman said. “Later they were called and counting was started but instead of being given Form No 45, they were delivered the results on plain white paper,” he added.