Poll rigging: D-day for providing proof is not far off

ISLAMABAD: The judicial commission, assigned to inquire into charges of deliberate systematic manipulation in the 2013 general elections, is unlikely to get any new evidence or proof about poll trickery from any political party except what has been publicly hammered ad infinitum over the past two years.
With just three days left before the expiration of the deadline of April 15 fixed by the commission for submission of brief statements by political parties with evidence of election trickery, not a single political entity has come out with any fresh evidence or material to back up its allegations.
If there had been any new documents pointing to systematic rigging, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Awami National Party (ANP) would have shared them with the public at large first before giving them to the commission, considering their track record. Since it has not so far been done, it establishes that nothing new is available to them while the moment of truth, forced by the PTI, has arrived.
As it appears by now, all these parties will rely on what they have publicly presented as credible proof of rigging for endless times after the elections. Among them, the PTI faces a great test to establish for which he made the political arena topsy-turvy for months. It has constituted a task force to fight its case in the commission.
While it is a dire political compulsion and impulse of the PTI to prove what it has been alleging through a massive public campaign or face colossal embarrassment and damage, the PPP and ANP have also sprung up into action to produce ‘evidence of election hanky-panky before the three-member commission, led by Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk.
On the other hand, some senior figures like former Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and Najam Sethi, who were extensively maligned for being part of the ‘conspiracy’ of election fraud, are more eager than these political parties to be called by the commission so that they get their names cleared. They have volunteered their depositions before the commission.
A major piece of evidence that the PTI wants to count on and produce before the judicial forum is “certified analysis reports from National Database & Registration Authority (Nadra) of at least at least 37 constituencies”. Three days back, the PTI wrote to the Nadra to the effect.But it ignored the March 25 decision of a three-member Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Saqib Nisar, which, while dismissing an appeal against Jamiate Ulemae
Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) member of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) assembly Shah Hussain, observed that votes could not be verified from Nadra without solid evidence of rigging.
The bench disposed of an appeal filed by Zubair Shah against the JUI-F member from Battagram Shah Hussain. Zubair Shah had filed a petition in the ET claiming that Shah Hussain won the election on the basis of rigging and prayed to get the votes verified from Nadra, but it was turned down. Zubair challenged the ET order in the Supreme Court. “In a rare case where there is solid evidence of rigging, the votes can be verified from Nadra,” Justice Saqib Nisar remarked.
Instead of admitting their weaknesses, lack of popularity, clear defeat, mismanagement, corruption, worst governance and blunders, the political parties beaten in the last elections are trying to camouflage their rout by hurling accusations at the very electoral process.
Former Prime Minister and senior PPP leader Raja Pervez Ashraf, who would become party in the commission on behalf of his party, got a severe battering in his home constituency. According to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), he stood second by securing 67,146 votes compared to the winner’s 121,067 ballots and PTI nominee’s 39,842 votes.
Noted lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan will lead the PPP show before the commission. His wife had contested a National Assembly seat from Lahore and bagged just 6,990 votes, lowest in the PPP history whereas the winner of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had clinched 119,312 votes. The PTI representative had secured 42,561 ballots. Aitzaz Ahsan recently issued a ‘white paper’ on rigging in this area.
What the political parties want to present before the commission as ‘substantial and substantive evidence’ of rigging is the same material that they had already unveiled before the election tribunals (ETs), which, however, was not considered valid, justifying unseating the winners.
Importantly, accusations and protests alleging poll rigging apart, the political parties had filed far less petitions with the ETs, challenging the 2013 polls. A total of 400 defeated contestants, either associated with political parties or independents, were aggrieved by the electoral results in their constituencies and had disputed them in the ETs. All and all, 402 petitions had been filed with the 14 ETs.
Of them, the PTI had filed 61 petitions - 31 related to the national seats; 25 pertained to the Punjab Assembly seats; 3 disputed the Sindh Assembly seats and one seat each of KP and Balochistan assemblies.
The PML-N had exceeded the PTI in challenging election to several seats of National Assembly and provincial assemblies and had filed 74 petitions with the ETs. Interestingly, it had also questioned 23 seats of the assembly of Punjab, a province where it had almost a clean sweep. It had also impugned 26 NA seats; 11 Sindh assembly seats; 10 KP legislature seats and four Balochistan assembly seats.
The PPP, which belatedly started alleging election rigging, had challenged just 55 seats of the federal and provincial assemblies - 24 national seats; ten Punjab legislature seats; 11 Sindh assembly seats, 6 KP legislature seats and 4 Balochistan assembly seats.