Rigging going on in the local body election preparations

Lahore: Vice Chairman PTI Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Provincial President Ejaz Ahmed Ch, MNA Munazza Hassan, Sec. Information Punjab Andleeb Abbas addressed a press conference on the complete miss- management and widespread rigging going on in the local body election preparations.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that both the local body bill presented in Punjab and in Sindh was completely against the spirit of democracy as it was a slightly modified form of 1979 and 2002 local govt. ordinance.
He said that the bills exposed the mind sets of these governments who under the pressure of Supreme Court have agreed to hold local body elections but through manipulation of the local body bill clauses they were trying to retain power at the provincial level. He stated that the Punjab local body bill which was hastily passed in the assembly is reflective of the extreme desire of PM Punjab to hold all powers in hi s hands of selecting office bearers and retaining financial desecration.

He said that the most rampant and illegal drawing of constituencies on the wings and fancies of PML-N MPA is a complete mockery of the delimitations exercise being taken. He said that the ECP has said that it is not being done well but has taken no action on this grave violation. He criticized the ECP as being a silent spectator on this rigging going on and demanded that ECP be answerable for not doing their job as delimitations come in their domain.

He also mentioned that the dates proposed for elections in Punjab 07-December and Sindh 27-November were unrealistic and declared that he can vouch with certainty that delimitations cannot take place within the given dates. He said that the whole process was a ridiculous exercise of making petitions against delimitation at such a short notice that most parties will not be able to fight a genuine case and thus give space to the govt. to rush through the local body elections without all stake holders being on board. He said that PTI will not accept such inaction by ECP and demanded that ECP takes steps to stop this violation. He also criticized the explanation given by ECP for not being able to print the ballad papers as they were too busy printing currency notes for the govt.

He called this an absolute corruption where the printing press is being used to print notes which are increasing the already over whelming inflation. He mentioned that the govt. is now considering giving the ballad papers for printing to the private institutions which he claimed would facilitate rigging as the private institutions will not have the same security and credibility as the printing press of Pakistan. He declared that PTI will not accept the printing of ballad papers from private institutions.

He said that PTI had accepted the general elections result for the sake of carrying out the democratic change over the govt. but it seems that this govt. and the way they are behaving are actually planning a selection and not an election in the LB Elections. With this in mind this cannot be called a democracy but autocratic leaders trying to hide behind sham elections and legislation.

He said that on the first of November PTI both in Lahore and in Multan will carry out protest against these govt. policies specially the energy bombs and inflation that the people of Pakistan have been crushed under. He declared that on the first PTI will raise its voice with the public against inflation and another plan of the govt. to hold sham local body elections and thus crush the spirit of devolving powers to the grass root level. He announced that PTI will continue its struggle for true democracy and a corruption free Pakistan till the govt. is forced to take back these anti-poor actions.

Noor Khan Bhabha, Shabbir Sial, Hafeez ullah Ali Zai, Malik Shazaib, Atif Ch, Ishtiaq Malik, Neelam Ashraf, Naveed Ahmed, Shehryar Raza and other office bearers were present.