NEW YORK: Citing a 100-page report from the Commonwealth Observer Group, a report on Monday highlighted that the US can not afford its shortsighted coverage of prioritising a secure army partnership over a secure, democratic Pakistan. As a substitute, the Worldwide Enterprise Instances reported, the US should endorse the findings of the Commonwealth, different observer experiences and situation all army assist on verifiable measures in direction of restoration of democracy in Pakistan, together with an impartial probe into the election irregularities and the intimidation of judges and offering funds for foundations of civil society.
The report from the Commonwealth Observer Group has offered proof that the elections held in Pakistan in February final yr had been rigged to sideline Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). The conclusions made within the report will not be mere allegations from a dropping occasion however has revealed findings of worldwide judges and election consultants, the Worldwide Enterprise Instances reported.
“The Commonwealth report methodically particulars how state establishments had been weaponised to create a ‘pre-election interval that considerably impacted the extent enjoying subject.’ The 2 most consequential actions had been judicial. First, the Supreme Courtroom miraculously reversed a lifetime ban on politicians holding workplace, a transfer that Madiha Afzal of the Brookings Establishment famous was designed to make sure ‘the scales had been tipped closely’ in favour of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the army’s most well-liked candidate. Second, and most cripplingly, the Election Fee, with the Supreme Courtroom’s blessing, stripped PTI of its iconic cricket bat election image,” the report highlighted.
Candidates of Imran Khan-founded PTI occasion had been pressured to contest elections as independents, invisible on ballots to voters with important illiteracy and had been legally banned from claiming their share of reserved seats, as per the report. It additional mentioned, “On election day, the manipulation continued. Cellular networks had been shut down nationwide, a transfer condemned by UN rapporteurs as opposite to worldwide regulation. Election watchdogs just like the Free and Truthful Election Community (FAFEN) reported that ‘election brokers weren’t allowed to watch consequence tabulations in about half of the constituencies,’ and documented ‘main discrepancies’ between votes counted at polling stations and the outcomes later declared.
As per the report, younger voters in 2024 got here out in giant numbers to vote, nevertheless, their votes had been invalidated by what they think about as corrupt system.
“The ensuing authorities is a weak, illegitimate coalition of events that, as Brookings Evaluation said, ‘will operate as a junior associate to the army.’ It is a authorities that has already handed ‘unprecedented energy to the military.’ America is now tethered to a regime with minimal widespread assist, whose major constituency is the army brass, not the Pakistani individuals,” the IBT reported.
“The US can not afford its shortsighted coverage of prioritising a secure army partnership over a secure, democratic Pakistan. That coverage has created the very monster it sought to regulate: an unstable, nuclear-armed nation the place the army is the one winner and the persons are disenfranchised,” the report said.