Re: Free and fair elections
CM you have raised a very valid point.
you have 10 marla houses in Pakistan with 100 registered voters.. and it’s very common. Any move to cleanse the voters list is actually resisted by the established political parties. Any suggestion to use technology like electronic machines with finger printing goes at snails pace in execution because the actual electoral process is hugely manipulated.
Furthermore election commission has never been independent in Pakistan. The 2002 election was the most rigged election in the history of Pakistan. Government sponsored candidates got 25.000/30.0000 blank ballot papers prior to the elections. In spite of that the government sponsored candidates very losing big time when results started pouring in. There was an election cell running in the governor house at that time.. Khalid Maqbool was the governor then.. they stopped announcing the results around 9:00 p.m.. and a lot of results were changed when they were finally announced around 10:00 a.m. I remember people like Kasuri and Hamayun Akhtar got the surprise of their life when they were announced successful in the morning.
2008 election was less rigged but nonetheless a lot of manipulation was done in PPP favor in more or less the same way.
If electoral process becomes clean in Pakistan we will see a lot of surprises.