Open rigging

Author:

Sir: I have never voted in my life but, this time, I did. The reason was simply PTI’s tsunami and the promises of our Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for free and fair elections. I live in a slum area of new Karachi and my constituency is NA-243. I called a friend of mine who, unlike me, lives in a proper neighbourhood but shares the same constituency. I asked him if he would come along and he agreed so we both went to the nearby camps (by MQM) for voter guidance. My friend just showed the officers present there his NIC and they easily told him where his polling station was. Surprisingly, they could not find my name on the list; camp after camp they failed to provide me with any clue as to where my polling station was.

I decided to directly go to the polling station were my friend was going to vote, which was a nearby school. As soon as we arrived we saw some police staff outside. As we entered, we were guided to the polling room where what we saw was beyond imaginable — we saw MQM workers rigging the votes. We saw one person copying the NIC number from the voters’ list, putting it on the ballot paper and passing it to the next person who was putting his thumb print on it and stamping on the kite (the MQM’s election symbol) only to proceed to put the ‘vote’ into the ballot box. We stood in our spots and saw them continue with this rigging for about 10 to 15 minutes. Suddenly, a person rushed into the room and told them that some media person had arrived and they stopped doing what they were doing. My friend was asked to show his NIC for voting but his vote had already been cast. My heart was broken. What is the use of voting when such massive rigging is taking place? Why were the police and rangers standing outside and why was a single police officer not present in the polling room? If we had dared to open our mouths we would have been beaten up by the MQM workers who had surrounded us at the time. All the polling stations were in absolute control of the MQM and they welcomed those who were Urdu speaking and those who were Punjabi or Sindhi like myself were rejected at every polling station, by being told to go to some other polling station because our names were not on the list; this was all untrue because we all were registered voters. They just rejected me after seeing the address on my NIC, which indicated that I live in an area where Sindhis are in a majority. I would request the ECP to notice these flaws and to take notice of the fact that NA-243 was rigged.

SALEEM JAMALI

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