Pakistan polls engineered by Army in favour of Khan, says Mohajir leader

The general election in Pakistan was engineered by the powerful Army in favour of Imran Khan and his party Pakistan-Tehreek-e-Insaaf, a Mohajir community leader in the US has alleged, demanding fresh polls under international supervision.

Voice of Karachi chairman Nadeem Nusrat alleged that the army establishment heavily used Pakistani judiciary and anti-corruption body NAB against Khan’s political rivals and even jailed his main political foe Nawaz Sharif and his daughter just a few days before the polls.

“Pakistani military establishment made the whole electoral process highly dubious right from the beginning of election campaign. Khan and his party Pakistan-Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) were treated as the chosen one and were offered special privileges, whereas his political rivals were subjected to a systematic campaign of hurdles, intimidation and defamation,” he alleged.

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Barring PTI, he said, every other political party in Pakistan is complaining of massive and organised rigging and have categorically rejected the results.

“Media reports are also pointing out to electoral fraud and now the reports of international observers and foreign media are also endorsing claims of massive electoral fraud in Pakistan,” he said.

“The report of the US State Department too has alluded to reports of widespread irregularities. Hundreds of thousands of angry voters are out in a number of areas protesting against this fraud but Pakistani media is not allowed to cover this mass agitation,” Nusrat said.

“This is a clear mockery of democracy, law and the Constitution of Pakistan. International community must not accept results of this engineered election and should exert pressure on Pakistan to hold fresh election under the United Nations supervision,” the US-based Mohajir leader said.

The term Mohajir is used to describe the Urdu-speaking immigrants who left India in 1947 and came to Pakistan. A large chunk of them settled in the Sindh province.