ISLAMABAD: The president human rights cell and ex-senator of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Farhatullah Babar on Friday said that dark clouds hanging over the Feb 8 elections get thicker by the day and there is a need to expose the hidden hands behind the attempts to deprive the people of their right to elect their representatives to put the country back on the rails.
Speaking at a function to mark the anniversary of late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, he said, “Thursday evening Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari announced the schedule of country-wide election campaign visits after unveiling a 10-point election manifesto of the Party some days before”.
“Within hours of the announcement of country-wide visits a Resolution was mysteriously moved in Senate calling for postponing the elections even though it was not on the Orders of the Day,” he said.
It is obvious that some elements are scared of elections and do not want the people to speak up and are making a last-minute desperate bid to postpone the polls, he said. He recalled the words of Bilawal that Pakistan can no longer afford the politics of convenience or of back door politics and asked democracy-loving people to foil conspiracies against polls. “You will not stand for it. I will not stand for it. The people will not stand for it,” he quoted Bilawal as having said.
He said that last week two important reports about the state of democracy in Pakistan, one by the German Foundation and the other by PILDAT, questioned electoral credibility and expressed concerns over the perpetuation of hybrid system of governance in the country.
He said that the Party believed in bringing about fundamental change through democratic process and elections and not via revolution and bloodshed. The first step in this connection is free and fair elections with a level playing field for all parties and leaders including even those in the opposition who are at the receiving end of the state apparatus, he said.
He deplored that the chairman senate allowed the motion for the resolution against elections to be moved in violation of the rules and even in the absence of the quorum. Some days back a resolution similarly moved in the senate without quorum and without being on the orders of the day called for the trial of civilians in military courts, he said and deplored that the House of Federation was thus being manipulated.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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