Daily Times

It seems security forces have completely failed to bring a halt to attacks on election candidates. On Sunday, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidate for the PK-99 constituency Ikramullah Gandapur was killed in a suicide attack. His driver and guard were also among the casualties.

On the same day, JUI-F candidate and former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani survived a second attack within a period of ten days. That one election candidate has been attacked twice in such a small period shows how determined terrorist forces are to disrupt the Pakistani electoral process, while the fact that three election candidates have been killed in July alone shows the inability of Pakistani security forces to bring them to a stop.

This is not good for the smooth conduct of July 25 elections. Why would Pakistani citizens risk their life by assembling at polling stations, many of which must be terrorist targets, to vote in an election, which may not be fair in the first place? Therefore nobody should be surprised if we find out on July 25 that voter turnout has been low, especially in KP and Balochistan.

Though, just because most of the recent attacks have been concentrated in KP and Balochistan, it doesn’t mean the authorities in Punjab can afford to let their guard down. In April, head of Punjab Counter Terrorism Department Rai Tahir warned that Punjab is vulnerable to attacks from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS).

Since 2014, Pakistan has won numerous victories against terrorism. This January, NACTA reported that incidents of terrorist violence had dropped by 58 percent since 2010. Unfortunately, just when this country needed peace the most, terrorist forces have managed to regroup and launched attacks. We hope the caretaker administration makes all the necessary arrangements for peaceful polling on July 25.  *

Published in Daily Times, July 23^rd 2018.