Election results were not announced after 3 days: Owais Muzaffar

KARACHI:

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader and newly elected member of the Sindh Assembly from PS-88, Owais Muzaffar, has complained that the returning officer had not issued him a certificate of success in the elections and he had to come to the office of the provincial chief election commissioner to register his protest.

Speaking to the media outside the office of the provincial chief election commissioner, he said that it was strange that the results of constituencies having more than 200,000 voters had been issued while the result of his constituency that only had 28,000 voters was not being released even three days after the elections.

He urged the media to investigate as to why such tactics were being used. He also alleged that PPP candidates from Thatta, Sassui Palejo and Hameed Soomro were leading in the number of votes, but the vote counts were changed after 24 hours and they were declared as losers with a minor difference in the vote count.

He expressed hope that the election commission will act on the application of Sassui Palejo and Hameed Soomro, and arrange a recounting of the results.

Replying to a question Owais Muzaffar said that he did not want to blame anyone and that everyone should respect the mandate given to PPP by the people of Sindh.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 15^th, 2013.