'Right to vote robbed' in by-polls: TTAP

Opposition leaders slam by-elections dealt 'fatal blow' to public confidence

ISLAMABAD:

The Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz Aaeen-e-Pakistan (TTAP) on Saturday blasted the government and state institutions, alleging that the constitutional order, electoral system and judicial authority in the country have been rendered meaningless.

Addressing a press conference, Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar and Taimur Jhagra warned that the country was drifting into political chaos, where the right to vote, judicial independence and democratic norms had been compromised beyond recognition.

Khokhar lamented that the recent by-elections had dealt a fatal blow to public confidence in the electoral system. "Whatever happened in the by-elections has robbed the Pakistani people of their right to vote."

The opposition leader further accused the government of dismantling constitutional safeguards and running the state in a manner that even the IMF "has exposed in the middle of the marketplace".

"In a country where corruption ranges from Rs5 trillion to Rs6 trillion, what else can you expect?"

Khokhar pointed to events in Azad Jammu and Kashmir as a harbinger of broader instability.

"In Azad Kashmir, people were herded like sheep and goats into another party. There is no opposition left there, and when that happens, the public takes the system into its own hands," he said, warning, "Do not push Pakistan to a similar point".

Khokhar said that the incarcerated PTI leader Imran Khan was "a political reality" and "the most popular leader in the country right now," asserting that the legitimacy of the system could not be restored by ignoring him.

"The value of law books has been reduced to nothing. There is an environment of complete uncertainty in the country," he lamented, urging the rulers to "lead the nation towards peace".

Speaking on the occasion, Taimur Jhagra cited international scrutiny to underscore the situation. "Just yesterday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern in its report," he said, adding that the report showed "astonishment at the lack of judicial independence".

Jhagra bemoaned the sorry state of affairs of the judiciary, saying, "We say every day that the courts are not doing their job properly".

He also lashed out at the treatment of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's leadership. "Our chief minister was called a terrorist and a drug dealer," he lamented. "You can censor the media, but you cannot censor the mind of the people."

Pointing specifically to NA-18, the largest constituency in K-P, Jhagra presented vote statistics to question the transparency of the by-poll.

"The constituency has 602 polling stations. Shehrnaz Omar Ayub Khan [wife of Omar Ayub Khan] received 149,782 votes while Babar Nawaz secured 124,686. Two out of every three polling stations were won by Shernaz Omar Ayub," he said.

However, he lamented that, "Form-45, Form-46 and Form-47 have neither been released nor uploaded on the ECP website".

"We want an election where the vote cast into the box is the vote that comes out." He said the Election Commission of Pakistan had "released only one sheet, Form-47," adding that "Form-47 has become the worst insult in our political vocabulary".

He questioned the rationale behind spending billions on an election that "no one trusts", and lamented that PTI could not even campaign in Lahore, whereas "PML-N and Captain Safdar were running campaigns as they pleased".