Daily Times

The elections have already been rigged and manipulated and only the formality of going at the polling booths on July 25 remains.

This has been stated by former Senator Farhatullah Babar while speaking at the launch of Election Guide by Democracy Reporting International and United Nations Development Programme on Thursday. Poll day manipulation has become far more difficult because of changes in the law, which has quietly given way to pre-poll rigging and post poll manipulation, he said.

“Seldom before has the pre-poll process been so vitiated, so unfair and so grotesque. The invisible political engineers seem desperate for a fragmented and divided parliament that is easier to manipulate. A silent coup has taken place, far softer and subtler than any previous coups,” the former senator said.

“As a result, there is a civilian government but without powers; there is media but without freedom; there are election candidates without freedom to choose a political platform and there are voters but whose right to vote seems to have already been exercised,” Farhatullah Babar said, adding that election observers are not banned but they are patently discouraged, he said.

Published in Daily Times, July 6^th 2018.