Election rigging: PPP ‘ready’ to plead cases before panel

Senator Aitzaz Ahsan will head the party’s legal team at the judicial commission

ISLAMABAD:

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Saturday hinted at becoming a party in the election fraud investigation and pleading its case before the three-member judicial commission formed on the demand of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Former prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, who is also the PPP’s secretary general, told reporters that Senator Aitzaz Ahsan will head the PPP’s legal team at the judicial commission. Aitzaz, a prominent lawyer, is also leader of the opposition in the Senate, where the PPP-led coalition of opposition parties is in majority.

Ashraf said the proposal was discussed within the party during its recently held meeting on electoral reforms. “Once it is formally approved by the party co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari, the PPP will submit its request before the chief justice-led commission,” he said.

Trounced in the 2013 parliamentary vote, the PPP lost majority stakes in the National Assembly yet it managed to form the provincial government in Sindh, its main political bastion. Eventually it claimed that in certain constituencies of Punjab its candidates lost due to massive rigging.

It is expected that the PPP will present the case of two constituencies, where it claims rigging took place.



One of the constituencies is Lahore’s NA-124, where Bushra Aitzaz, the spouse of Aitzaz Ashan, contested and lost to a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz candidate by a big margin. The other case is expected to be that of a Gujranwala constituency where the PPP labour wing president Chaudhry Manzoor had contested and lost.

Senator Aitzaz Ahsan also told reporters in Lahore that he was ready to submit proof of rigging at NA-124 in the court in the first phase. “In the second phase, the party will take proof of rigging from all constituencies and place them before the commission,” he added.

The judicial commission in its median meeting on Thursday asked all political parties to submit their claims before it. The PTI has already announced its six-member penal to plead party’s stance before the commission.

Najam Sethi, who was Punjab’s caretaker chief minister during the polls, has also asked the commission to make him a party. The PTI alleges that Sethi had colluded with the PML-N to rig the polls in Punjab from where the PML-N won by an overwhelming majority.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2015.