The House of Gujrat will not become a house of cards as preparations are being made by the Chaudhry brothers in full swing to unearth the technique of electoral success.
This came to be known during an informal and formal conversation between The News and the former Deputy Prime Minister and former Punjab Chief Minister, Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi who, apart from being one of the top leaders of Pakistan Muslim League, is also head of the cell that is carrying out intensive study of the ‘actual background of electoral success’ in the last general elections.
When asked as to what he meant by the techniques of electoral success, the former CM explained that the PML was surely winning more than 80 to 90 seats in the National Assembly during the last general elections but the technique of electoral success reversed the results overnight.
Who did all that, was the question then asked and how was the PML leader sure that his party was poised to win so large number of seats at the national scale? Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi replied, “The outgoing members of the Election Commission and some of their ‘well-wishers’ equipped with all necessary techniques and paraphernalia did that job”. “As regards the hope of such good election results, the party had the highest number of popular electable politicians in its ranks who had rendered practical public service to the people’s satisfaction. A large number of them belonged to the southern part of Punjab.”
The former CM was then asked what would he or his party do after unearthing the so-called techniques? Did the PML plan to apply this ‘specialized knowledge’ after learning it, in the forthcoming elections and would it be practicable in any way, given the awakening of print, electronic and social media, civil society and legal fraternity?
Chaudhry Pervaiz replied, “We don’t want to copy them nor do we intend to learn the techniques for their application in the forthcoming elections. Our intention is to guard against all those ugly happenings in future. If we know what techniques were applied we won’t allow their recurrence. As such, our popularity, whatever its graph, won’t be allowed to be hijacked”.
What did he mean by the term hijacked in this context? He responded, “If no rigging is done and if there are no engineered polls, the popularity of a party, whatever its degree, translates directly into votes”.
Answering yet another question, the former CM stated, “ I fully agree with you that the officials of some sections of the establishment are no more there who favoured and supported specific politicians and their agendas. Now the establishment is headed by neat and clean people who have no such interests.” At this point, the former CM added, while concluding, “And many in our powerful set-ups that are known as invisible governments, now hold good opinion about us also”.
