My understanding of election process is that - On each polling station, political agent is shown an empty box at start of polling. - He can remain there throughout polling and counting process. - Then he signs that counting results of that polling station and gets a copy of result. - The candidate can sum up the results from each polling agent to get result of his constituency. - In case of discrepencies he goes to tribunal. If his copies of result do not match with official result its an easy case for tribunal for recount. The details of all polling stations were available online before elections. I downloaded excel file myself from ECP site. I think the process reasonably involves all stake holders. Massive rigging is not that easy here and is possible where people have extremely strong hold where they can buy/threat Political agent e.g. MQM in Karachi. The constituencies where rigging was proved came out pretty early after elections as potentially rigged ones. If there had been massive rigging throughout, then I would expect from PTI an Excel sheet where their Polling Agents results are compared with ECPs results. They should have shown serious differences. On the contrary, PTIs criticism has mostly been on appointment process of ROs. And on post election appointments of people involved in elections. Even if there were problems with appointments, presence of PTIs polling agents at polling stations would still ensure that they will have proofs of rigging if it happened. I dont consider it justifiable to consider few cases and generalize it to whole election and demanding re-election. If margin of defeat had been 20-30 seats, one could think of supporting re-elections. It had been a massive defeat. One important aspect of the matter is that PTI can not be a party and a judge in a situation. There is a conflict of interest angle to the situation, PTI is beneficiary of the demands they put. So their demands have to be reasonable. Its a good cause to hold massive protests for ensuring that there is Biometric system in next elections, there are CCTV cameras in all polling stations, legislation is done to ensure that those whose finger prints are found on multiple votes should be publicly severely penalised, legislation is done to ensure that court system delivers justice within a specific period and stay orders can not be misused etc. These all are neutral demands. But if demand of re-elections is added to it, this makes it a case of typical opposition trying to topple government. And this single but huge demand is the reason that I shall not join Azadi march inshAllah.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 06:08:22 +0000
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