A boy who participated in Jamaat-e-Islami’s protest at Mazar-e-Quaid on Friday holds a sign saying people’s right to vote was snatched. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/ EXPRESS
KARACHI: On the sixth consecutive day of protests against ‘hijacking’ of elections in Karachi, thousands of people showed up at the Mazar-e-Quaid with demands that the Election Commission of Pakistan to hold re-election across the city.
Activists and supporters of a number of political parties, including Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Jamiat-e-Ulema-Islam-Fazlur Rehman (JUI-F), Jamiat-e-Ulema-Islam-Samiul Haq (JUI-S), Jamiat-e-Ulema-Pakistan (JUP), started arriving at the venue holding their party flags and sat on the floor mats laid on the road adjacent to the Quaid’s mausoleum.
Leaders addressing the participants announced the boycott of re-election on 43 polling stations of the NA-250 constituency, calling it a ‘lollipop’ and an attempt by the Election Commission of Pakistan to ‘whitewash the extensive rigging across the city’.
“In result of sham elections, a political mafia was allowed to extend its control over the city of lights. Every responsibility for the deteriorating law and order situation will only be on the Chief Election Commissioner Fakhruddin G Ebrahim and the Army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani,” said JI leader Nasrullah Khan Shajee.
Shajee said that the protests will continue until their demands were met and protestors on Saturday will throng the provincial election commission office. He informed the participants that the JI had filed a petition in the Supreme Court of Pakistan against the bogus elections in Karachi and Hyderabad.
For the candidates of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) who had contested the elections, the JUI-F leader Maulana Umer Sadiq said that all those were not ‘elected’ by citizens of Karachi but represent the ‘thappa mafia’.
Maulana Sadiq said that only re-election across Karachi and respect to the people’s mandate could save the city from ‘future tumult’.
JUP leader Mustaqim Noorani asked the chief election commissioner to disclose the reasons behind not holding the re-polls when hundreds of evidences regarding extensive rigging and the commission’s failure had surfaced.
“People will be justified in believing that the election commission was part of the international agenda of accommodating the stooges,” he said. “I also want to make it clear to Nawaz Sharif that if Karachi’s mandate issue is not resolved, the government will not be able to govern in the centre with peace.”
Published in The Express Tribune, May 18th, 2013.
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Ji always and never accept any Election result Now people really know, what are their aims,focus Just to disturb the political atmosphere, they know, they can never come in power, so they feel,why their other parties to run th Govt JI, please grow up
Same old tactics of JI. Exploit everything no matter what it is. But they should realize and put their wishful thinking aside that Karachi would accept them in place of MQM. Karachi have voted for PTI not for them since they only know how to abuse the issues instead of resolving them. May Allah guide them all.