Asghar Khan case: Poll manipulators exposed, says PM

Voters told to be ‘vigilant’ against fraud.

FAISALABAD:

Seeming nonchalant about the Pakistan Muslim Legaue-Nawaz (PML-N)’s strong showing in Punjab by-polls, the prime minister turned to what may be the ruling party’s smoking gun come the elections: The Asghar Khan case.

Though the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has already earlier stressed that the case had been “buried” – insinuating that the government may not act upon the apex court verdict – the use of the verdict for political mileage seems to be fair game.

The days of elections being manipulated are over, promised Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf on Saturday, maintaining that the Asghar Khan case has revealed how elections were rigged in the past.

“The Supreme Court’s (SC) verdict on Asghar Khan’s petition has confirmed that anti-PPP forces and the establishment used state machinery to prop up a puppet government,” he said, while addressing a rally in Faisalabad’s Iqbal Stadium.

Promising that the upcoming general elections will be “the most transparent and impartial in Pakistan’s history,” PM Ashraf cautioned party workers and voters on the need to be vigilant against “those who may try to manipulate its results.”

The premier’s comments came days after Religious Affairs Minister Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah told journalists that the Asghar Khan case had been “buried” and insinuated that the government may not act upon the apex court verdict.

Shah made it clear at the time that the government would not refer PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif to the Federal Investigation Agency, saying it was up to the people to judge politicians implicated in the case. He questioned whether those who had received money to conspire against a sitting government deserved people’s votes.

The premier’s speech – which, while avoiding any direct mention of the Sharifs, was laced with references against the PML-N leadership – seemingly took its cues from Shah’s earlier statement.



He claimed PML-N’s leadership believed in “hollow” slogans and dubbed them “self-styled sympathisers” of the oppressed classes.

“Everyone knows that whenever PML-N has won the elections, [its leadership] has always reserved the top slots for their family members and never for party stalwarts and activists,” claimed PM Ashraf. He maintained that PPP, on the contrary, had always elevated the party’s lower ranks to those top slots.

“Despite being an ordinary party worker, I was elevated to the country’s top office,” said PM Ashraf, challenging other parties to provide such opportunities to their members.

“If they believe in recognising the services of their party workers, they should demonstrate it with such examples,” he asserted.

Claiming that PPP had always supported the downtrodden and formulated policies for their well-being, the premier maintained it was the only party in the country which could resolve people’s problems. He brought up the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), terming it a revolution for changing the destinies of the poverty-ridden.

PM Ashraf also held up PPP co-chairman President Asif Ali Zardari as the “saviour of democracy” in Pakistan. He maintained that President Zardari kept democracy from derailing following Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, when everyone in the country had been uncertain about its future. The premier added that Zardari’s political acumen also forced Pervez Musharraf to quit the president’s office and leave the country. Finally, he said, for the first time in the country’s history, a sitting president voluntarily surrendered his powers to Parliament, all due to President Zardari’s commitment to strengthening democratic institutions.

With the country’s coalition government about to become the first democratic dispensation to complete a full term in history, PM Ashraf credited Zardari’s ‘visionary’ reconciliation politics for such an outcome. He claimed PPP would sweep the upcoming general elections as well and form governments once again at both federal and provincial levels. (WITH ADDITIONAL INPUT FROM APP)

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th, 2012.