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Judicial Commission inquiry and findings

one of the signs of end of days when corruption and shamelessness will be celebrated and the worse of the worse will be the leaders and they will be proud of their work and refuse to accept anything wrong with their attitude
look at the smug faced saad rafiqe for example. in any other western country the person will be discarded for ever from politics but he will be standing again and people with sapped minds will still vote for him

let alone being boycotted by the society, any person who loses his public face, retires on its own, out of shame. here we have who openly say corruption per hamara haq nae hae kia?

only if media was not a lap dog, we could move things to betterment at a faster pace.
 
Ex-provincial election chief spills the beans before JC; PML-N to submit list of witnesses

The former election commissioner for Punjab, who oversaw the 2013 general elections in the province, has confessed to getting extra ballot papers printed on the request of returning officers (ROs) in several constituencies.

“I do not know the [exact] number but in many constituencies ballot papers beyond the 100% electorate were printed on the request of ROs,” said Mehboob Anwar in his sworn statement on Thursday while recording his testimony before the Judicial Commission investigating claims of organised rigging in the 2013 polls.

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He also told the panel that he did not seek permission from his high-ups for the printing of ballot papers but he did inform the election commission about this in writing.

The three-judge commission, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Nasir-ul-Mulk, has urged Anwar not to discuss anything regarding the last general elections with anyone because he was giving his statement on oath.

“Do you remember the RO had requested for 15,000 ballot papers in excess than the registered voters in NA-154 Lodhran,” Abdul Hafiz Pirzada, the counsel for the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), questioned Anwar, to which the official replied in the negative.

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He said the ROs decided the number of ballot papers required in each constituency and made their request in writing. All the correspondence record should be available with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), he added.

Anwar also confirmed the printing process started on April 19, 2013, but the delivery of printed material to the ROs was not completed till May 5, 2013. He, however, expressed his ignorance about the reasons for delay.

The official admitted that ballot papers should have been sent to the ROs three days before the polling date. He added that no one sought an explanation from him regarding the delay in the delivery of ballot papers. “It is true that we did not complete the delivery process of ballot papers on time.”

On another query by the PTI counsel, he denied his direct connection with any member of the election commission. However, he said he had formally met with ECP Punjab member Riaz Kayani only once on March 26, 2013, in the office of the Provincial Election Commission.

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Anwar also replied in the negative when asked by Pirzada if he had seen the statement or discussed with any official the reply submitted by the ECP to the Judicial Commission and that agencies involved in the printing process had demanded double the amount of ballot papers due to the increase in number of contesting candidates.

Anwar served as the provincial election commissioner for Punjab from December 2011 till December 2014. He was under the supervision of the chief election commissioner and complied with his directions.

The hearing was adjourned till Friday after the PTI counsel asked for two more hours to cross-examine the former provincial election commissioner. Pirzada will resume the cross-examination today.

PTI Chairman Imran Khan, who started the campaign to get the last elections audited, was also in the courtroom, keenly observing the proceedings along with other party leaders.

In the end, when Shahid Hamid, counsel for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), told the commission he wanted to submit a list of witnesses, the chief justice asked him to submit the list by Monday.

Nasir-ul-Mulk also asked the lawyers of political parties to intimate the witnesses about the purpose of their summoning so they could prepare for why they had been called for.
 
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11th may is the black day in history of Pakistan's democracy, where under NRO scheme ruling elite rigged the election.
 
Let us be objective about it. All that is revealed that some 93,000 votes; despite having the correct ID card numbers and counter foils; could not be verified because the thumb impressions were either smudged or wrongly taken.

To claim that all of these were ‘Bogus’ is an extreme ‘Untruth’. Besides Imran Khan got about 88,000 votes, only about 73,000 votes were verifiable, who can say how many of the non- verifiable votes were casts for Imran Khan??

Don’t know how many honourable members have used electronic gates at the Dubai airport. When I was living there, I used them on exit & entry. I had to press my thumb many times before the gate opened and more than once the gate wouldn’t open and I had to go thru the normal channel. Even at the electronic entry gates at the London Heathrow, when I returned from Dubai on the 23/4/2015, camera at the electronic gate did not recognise me and I had to go thru the immigration officer. How can one expect all the thumb impressions taken by a hurried part trained staff to be correct in all respects??

I have not voted in Pakistan since the 1976 elections of ZAB era. I can vouch that there were long lines and conditions in the voting booths being abysmal to say the least. Presiding officers simply went thru the motions in a hurry; obviously resulting in non-verifiable thumb impressions.

Unless you have electronic voting system, smudged thumb prints will be common. I am sure that were you to investigate votes in the KPK elections, results won’t be any different.

However Imran Khan is a charismatic leader and if he could convince his followers to defend his decision of inviting Taliban to open office in KPK; he can beguile them to believe that the entire 93K votes are bogus. PML-N on the other hand should not hide behind the legalities and take the high moral ground. In my view, PML-N should volunteer to have new elections in NA-125 & NA-122 and thus shutting off Imran Khan’s rhetoric for good. But sadly it would never be, both the party leaders are wily, arrogant & selfish. Therefore the country is destined to suffer for may more months.

IMHO following is the best article I have read about this whole affair.

A fishing expedition?
BABAR SATTAR
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The writer is a lawyer.
WHO can disagree that for too long irregularities and corrupt practices during elections have remained acceptable for us in Pakistan? Or that without Imran Khan and PTI’s doggedness and audacity to keep beating a wailing (if not dead) horse, fair elections wouldn’t have been a public issue? But notwithstanding the public service of flagging a vital issue or igniting debate on urgent electoral reforms and energising and expanding PTI’s own support base in the process, are PTI’s wishes about to come true with the judicial commission (JC) in action?

The media’s excitement over JC proceedings is understandable. Who wouldn’t want dry legalese to be peppered with intense political drama? We are witnessing a public trial of PML-N and the Election Commission with people of Pakistan as judge and jury. As the Judicial Commission Ordinance, 2015, doesn’t have a legal implementation mechanism, the PML-N government could theoretically disregard whatever the JC finds. Except that a finding that PML-N lacks a public mandate would rob the government of its political authority and ability to continue forth.

PTI would wish the JC to do what the election tribunal has done in NA-125: declare the whole election void due to “prevalence of extensive corrupt or illegal practice at the election”. Section 70 of the Representation of People Act, 1976, authorises an election tribunal to do so if it is convinced (on the basis of evidence presented by parties in adversarial proceedings) that the veracity of the election result can’t be ascertained due to sweeping illegalities committed by anyone and not necessarily the winner.

What we have seen so far are theories of rigging based on anecdotes, innuendos and deductive reasoning.
This is different from saying that the winning party stole the election through premeditated design and conspiracy. It is saying that given that the result can’t be verified due to widespread illegalities, it must be discarded and fresh elections called even without any determination of who indulged in wrongdoing. Can the JC assume such Section 70 powers and declare election 2013 void on the whole based on inferences drawn from sample constituencies in inquisitorial proceedings?

Whether it is PTI’s white paper or repeated allegations of rigging and conspiracy against all and sundry, what we have seen so far are theories of rigging based on anecdotes, innuendos and deductive reasoning. The theories are laced together by an incurable belief that PML-N couldn’t possibly have won a straight fight. Other than the resolve to kill PML-N with smoking guns, PTI has adduced no hard evidence of rigging. Does that make the JC a fishing expedition for PTI?

PTI is suggesting that, on the eve of the election, individuals especially hired by the caretaker set-up from Urdu Bazaar Lahore printed additional ballots for rigging. It is also saying that election results weren’t computed and announced on the basis of genuine Form 14s, ie irrespective of what transpired at a polling station, the returning officer (RO) just assigned votes on the basis of his whims with no correlation to Form 14 and the result actually tabulated at polling stations by the presiding officers.

Did PML-N rig the election by engineering the hiring of extra staff on the eve of the election (with the complicity of the Election Commission and caretakers), used such staff to print and also steal extra ballot papers and then stuff ballot boxes with such stolen ballot papers on election day? If this is the theory, the fact that extra staff was hired or additional ballots printed is evidence of what? Relevant would be proof that such staffers were PML-N agents, and that they stole ballots and that PML-N stuffed boxes with such ballots.

The other theory is that ROs were key players in the grand conspiracy and conjured up fake results on the night of May 11 after Mian Nawaz Sharif signalled to them during his victory speech. Later, ballot boxes were stuffed with garbage to ensure that results couldn’t be verified. Now this is a different theory from the first. So which one is it — fake results or stuffing? And in case of fake results, don’t we need evidence of swindlers huddled in dark rooms executing the conspiracy and exchanging favours with money etc?

Here is the reported basis of Imran Khan’s repeated allegation that Najam Sethi was involved in election rigging. Someone advised Khan that Americans record conversations of significant Pakistanis. That they recorded one between Nawaz Sharif and Najam Sethi in which Sethi allegedly informed Sharif in Punjabi that he had “inflicted 25 punctures” (“Mian saab paintee panchur laa ditay nai”). The poor Americans unable to decrypt the Punjabi version of ‘puncture’ sought help in translation from a Pakistani, who told someone, who told Khan.

Doesn’t sound plausible? Why would Sharif make Sethi chairman Pakistan Cricket Board if not to reward him? So there. Input? An anecdotal account and deductive cause-and-effect reasoning, thrown in with the cynical sense that anyone and everyone in our beloved homeland is up for sale. Output? Firm belief that there was a planned conspiracy and rigging. The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it is of little legal value. But how stark is the evidence problem if the object is to use legal proceedings to produce political consequences?

If PTI stumbles upon some hard evidence during the JC proceedings, it pushes the grand conspiracy theory. If not, it could urge the JC to conclude that as overwhelming irregularities now make it impossible to verify the authenticity of results of election 2013, the whole election ought to be declared void. Even if the JC refuses to take this flight of fancy, it could still reach the same conclusion as the election tribunal in NA-125 (without proposing re-election): that veracity of the election results can neither be confirmed nor denied.

Bottom line is that PTI has nothing to lose so long as election 2013 doesn’t get a clean chit of health from the JC. PTI has succeeded in shaping the rigging narrative in such manner that no matter what the outcome of JC proceedings, PTI will walk away looking good. It will either be celebrating its vindication by the JC or condemning our dysfunctional justice system for its failure to right wrongs.

The writer is a lawyer.

sattar@post.harvard.edu

Twitter: @babar_sattar

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2015
A fishing expedition? - Newspaper - DAWN.COM
 
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Systematic pattern in electoral rigging has emerged, Imran claims
By Web Desk
Published: May 12, 2015

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan said on Tuesday that a systematic pattern in 2013 general elections has emerged, evidence of which was presented before the judicial commission.

“On average, 3% to 4% extra ballots were printed in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P); however, in Safdar Abbasi’s electorate, who happens to be Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s son-in-law, 16% extra ballots were printed,” Imran claimed, while addressing the media in Islamabad.

In Lahore, he said, 120,000 extra ballots were printed in NA-125 whereas in NA-122, the figure was over 70,000.

Similarly, he claimed, in Hamza Shahbaz’s constituency, 62,000 extra ballots were sent, which is almost 21% extra than the original quantity that had to be printed, whereas in NA-118, the amount of extra ballots printed was 56,000.

The PTI chief argued that the role of Punjab’s election commissioner Anwer Mehboob in rigging was also evident.

“He lied that he only provided ballots asked by the returning officers (ROs),” said Imran. “This is on record, Jahangir Tareen’s RO asked for 15,000 extra ballots but Mehboob sent the said amount twice. In total, 30,000.”

The PTI chief said he had no doubts that the provincial election commissioner had sent those ballot papers.

A judicial commission under CJP Justice Nasirul Mulk is probing the alleged rigging in the 2013 general elections.
 

Systematic pattern was there from day-1. Everyone knew it but no one wanted to touch the issue and all wanted to brush it under the carpet to protect the aristocracy.

It is IK who has taken the stand for the country and the people.

I wish he now sorts PTI as well. It is very important.

What is the update on Justice Wajih-ud-Din issue ?
 
Systematic pattern was there from day-1. Everyone knew it but no one wanted to touch the issue and all wanted to brush it under the carpet to protect the aristocracy.

It is IK who has taken the stand for the country and the people.

I wish he now sorts PTI as well. It is very important.

What is the update on Justice Wajih-ud-Din issue ?

Dont know about it.
 
If we want to be fair with the people of Pakistan and the system of democracy, we have 2 options now:

- Decide the results again based on "Only" fully verifiable votes. For example, in NA-122, ET should do a recount for only verified votes and decide based on that. It assures that we are deciding based on public's opinion and no hint of rigging is there.
- Ask the candidates if the first option is not acceptable then we should do a re-election

In any fair and just society "Only" the above 2 options are fair and everything around this is just mumba jumba and wasting time and resources of both courts and the public. if this approach was taken in the beginning, it would be so easy and way less time consuming and no rhetorics or mud slinging would have been entertained from any sides.
 

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