ISLAMABAD: Fears have mounted over wide-ranging powers granted to military units overseeing Pakistan’s polling stations when the country votes Wednesday, with opposition parties and analysts warning the move could erode trust in the tense contest.
The Pakistan military will station over 370,000 troops nationwide to ensure the vote goes smoothly, the largest such deployment in the country’s history on an election day.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) later said military officers would also be given magisterial powers, effectively making them judge and jury to punish individuals for illegal acts committed inside polling stations.
“I don’t know why they have given these powers, because that will unnecessarily create doubts in the minds of people,” retired general and security analyst Talat Masood told AFP.
“I don’t think these powers have ever been granted.”
Election observers also questioned the move, and said there was rising anxiety over the large military presence at the polls.
“A lot of our interlocutors, and I would dare to say most of them, they raise serious concerns regarding the role of the military,” said Dimitra Ioannou, deputy chief observer of the European Union Election Observation Mission.
Last week, Sherry Rehman — opposition leader in the Senate, the parliament’s upper house — said the move could lead to potential conflicts and confusion. Raza Rabbani, another high-profile senator, demanded a clarification from the ECP.
The ECP said Sunday the presence of troops at polling stations is meant to ensure a “free and fair election.”
The military — which has ruled the country for roughly half its 70 year history — remains Pakistan’s most powerful institution and has a long history of meddling in politics and judicial affairs — a charge it denies.
“It would be difficult to call the elections free and fair,” Ibn Abdur Rehman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan told AFP Monday, following a press conference on media censorship during the campaign season.
The controversy comes as increasing militant attacks on campaign events in the last month have raised fears that insurgents may target voters.
Three candidates have been killed in attacks at political events this month, including a member of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party in a suicide attack on Sunday.
And on Monday, authorities announced an increased death toll — 153 — for an earlier attack on a rally in the town of Mastung in southwestern Balochistan province, making it the second-deadliest terror attack in Pakistan’s history.
The increasingly bitter contest is expected to be a tight race between jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s incumbent Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party and Khan’s PTI.
Fears mount in Pakistan over military’s election powers
Fears mount in Pakistan over military’s election powers
- Analysts warn powers granted for military overseeing of election polls could erode trust in the tense contest
- The 'magisterial powers' effectively make them judge and jury to punish individuals for illegal acts
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Erika Kirk, widow of influential activist, endorses Vance for US President
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- The endorsement comes as the Make America Great Again movement begins to look to a future without Trump
PHOENIX, USA: The widow of murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk has endorsed JD Vance for president in 2028, firing an early starting gun on the White House race, and offering the backing of the influential youth organization founded by her husband.
Erika Kirk, whose husband’s Turning Point USA was a major player in mobilizing young people to vote for Donald Trump in 2024, told thousands of attendees she was backing the vice president to become the 48th president.
“We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible,” she said on Thursday night at AmericaFest, the first major Turning Point gathering since Charlie Kirk was killed.
Vance is due to speak at the gathering on Sunday.
The endorsement comes as the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement begins to look to a future without Trump.
Vance has not yet committed to running in 2028, but he is widely expected to put himself forward.
An early endorsement from a group that has become increasingly powerful within the movement could help to create momentum that makes a Vance candidacy seem inevitable.
But it also comes at a time that fractures in the MAGA movement are becoming increasingly obvious, and as some key figures are starting to express frustration and disillusionment with Trump.
Last month, firebrand Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene launched a blistering attack on Trump’s second-term agenda, which she said was betraying voters.
Greene, until recently one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, has said she will leave congress in January, with some commentators speculating that she might make a tilt at 2028.
Other figures on the right, including white nationalist Nick Fuentes, also appear to be trying to lay claim to the crown.
Vance was close to Charlie Kirk in the months and years before he was shot dead on a Utah college campus, in a political assassination that shocked America and sent conservatives into shocked mourning.
The vice president flew to Utah to console Erika Kirk and to accompany Charlie Kirk’s body back to the couple’s Arizona home.
Footage showed Vance walking with the coffin as it was loaded onto Air Force Two.
Charlie Kirk, 31, was a talented speaker who toured college campuses where he challenged young people to debates on hot-button issues.
Edited clips of these confrontations helped build a large social media following, which he parlayed into a movement that worked to mobilize young voters on right-wing issues.
A month after his death, Trump posthumously awarded him the Presidential medal of Freedom, hailing the young activist as a “martyr for truth and freedom.”
