Re: I will win the elections even if they are rigged: Imran Khan
You mean they had apparently used this trick, that didn’t work, to stop Imran from winning the election.
The January parliamentary race, like most Pakistani elections under military rule, will likely be rigged by the Army and intelligence agencies. EU observers called the 2002 presidential election “deeply flawed,” and during the five decades I’ve covered Pakistan, I’ve witnessed repeated cases of intimidation of opposition figures. The country’s Election Commission, appointed by President Pervez Musharraf, has already made an outlandish attempt to cook the books this year. In 2002, 71.8 million voters registered to vote. With the population growing at 2.7 percent a year and a voting age of 18, the number should have increased to about 82 million this time. Yet when the electoral lists were announced five months ago, they included just 55 million, and Bhutto alleges many of the “lost” voters were women, her strongest supporters. The maneuver was ultimately blocked by a court order and U.S. pressure, and last week the commission published new lists including 80 million Pakistanis. But further shenanigans seem likely; a Pakistani daily, Dawn, has reported on tricks already underway including the use of “ghost polling booths” to misdirect voters.