President Pervez Musharraf has assured the Pakistani community that election would be held on Feb 18 and any party winning with required majority would be allowed to form government.
He said talk of rigging was unfounded and listed all the arrangements being made to ensure fair, free and independent elections. “Interim government is in place unlike in the past. Had we followed previous patrons, Arbab Rahim in Sindh, Pervaiz Elahi in Punjab would have been the chief ministers and Shaukat Aziz would still have been the prime minister in the centre,” he argued.
Addressing a very impressive gathering of Pakistanis living in Britain, President Musharraf said there has been talk of ghost polling stations. “But no one has come forward to identify where they are located,” he said and added that there is a complete electoral process as was provided in the Constitution. He said all constitutional provisions would be adhered to in an effort to ensure fair polling on the elections day.
The president said that transparent ballot boxes have been imported with a seal on each box that could not be tempered with. Similarly, polling agents of each contesting party would be present on each polling station. “Where is then a room for any rigging in elections,” he questioned.
He said allegation of likely rigging was only to undermine the prestige of the country, making outsider think that Pakistan being such a big state in the south Asian Region could not even hold fair and free elections.
President Musharraf said that no one would be allowed to stage any sort of agitation before or after the election. “We have witnessed that agitation as a reaction to Benazir Bhutto’s assassination caused Rs100 billion loss. We will not allow its re-run,” he observed.
He said he had a serious complaint against all international human rights organisations which expected level of human rights in Pakistan according to their developed societies. “They have their cultures and their environments and we have ours,” he remarked.
He said that if no party would win majority to form a government then there would be a coalition set-up. “There is no confusion that the chief executive will be the prime minister and in no way the president will encroach upon his domain,” he added.
He said he was working on three priorities. “My first priority was to ensure continuity of development process; secondly to eliminate terrorism and extremism from Pakistani society, and thirdly to hold free and impartial elections allowing the winning party to form government,” he said. He advised those living abroad not to criticise the government intention to hold free and fair election because by doing so they were not doing any service to the nation as well as to the state.
He said a Pakistani asked him a question in Davos maligning the Pakistan Army and its intelligence services for being responsible for escape of Rashid Rauf. “Do we need enemies from outside when our own nationals were casting such aspersions on country’s prestigious institutions,” he asked.
He said Rashid Rauf escaped from police custody for which investigations were being carried out and there was no involvement of either the army or the intelligence agencies. “Such people unleash such accusation only to promote their political objectives. But they must know how much damage they caused to the country,” he added.
The president recalled the history of judicial crisis getting into details as to how it was created and then projected to serve their own objective and further their political ends. He said he did everything according to the Constitution despite the fact that his own person and his office were at stake. “A reference was filed against the former chief justice in line with the constitutional provisions. But they violated the Constitution by not accepting the authority of the Supreme Judicial Council.”
He said he accepted the decision of the then Supreme Court. But then his election notification was withheld despite the fact that he won elections with 57 per cent votes representing all the provincial assemblies, National Assembly and the Senate.
He said they made mockery of judiciary and rendered the law enforcing agencies paralysed by subjecting top officials to appear in courts only to be insulted and punished. Not only this, the sovereignty of the Parliament was also undermined.
He said Atta crisis was due to massive smuggling of this commodity to neighbouring countries. So much so Pakistani Atta was being sold in Russian markets. Now steps have been taken to ensure no amount of Atta could be smuggled out of Pakistan besides importing enough wheat to overcome shortage.The president also talked at length about energy crisis.