Government implores patience amid escalating protests, resignation calls over rigging claims

ISLAMABAD/KARACHI/QUETTA: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party on Saturday demanded the country’s top judge and election commission official to resign amid nationwide protests against alleged vote fraud on February 8, as the interim premier urged all political parties to resort to legal recourse to address their grievances.
Pakistan’s recent general elections were marred by a nationwide shutdown of cellphone service and unusually delayed results, leading to accusations of election manipulation. The PTI and several other parties refused to accept the outcome, with protest demonstrations breaking out in different parts of the country against irregularities in vote counting.
In a statement issued on Saturday evening, Caretaker Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar urged all political parties to realize that victory and defeat were “inherent aspects” of the democratic process and they should take try to seek justice for any instance of electoral fraud by going to courts.
“While peaceful protest and assembly are fundamental rights, any form of agitation, violence, or incitement for vigilantism will not be condoned and law would take its course without any hesitation,” Kakar was quoted as saying in a statement issued by his office.
“Anarchy and disorder will not be tolerated at this crucial time,” he continued. “This only serves to advance the agenda for hostile forces, both domestic and foreign, to exploit and create grave law and order challenges.”
The prime minister said the caretaker government implored patience, as several political parties were also engaging in consultations to form governments at the federal and provincial levels in accordance with democratic norms and traditions.
Khan’s party was severely hamstrung ahead of the national polls, with rallies banned, its party symbol taken away, and dozens of its candidates rejected to stand in the electoral contest. Despite these challenges, it pulled a major surprise when over 100 independent candidates, most of them loyal to its founding leader, won the National Assembly seats.
The PTI still urged its supporters to protest election rigging, saying it was deprived of a “two-third majority” in parliament.
Hours before the demonstrations were to kick off on Saturday, a senior bureaucrat and Commissioner of Rawalpindi Division, Liaquat Ali Chattha, held a news conference wherein he admitted to his involvement in manipulating the election results and blamed Pakistan’s chief justice and top official of the election commission for rigging.
“The chief election commissioner (CEC) has no legal and moral justification to remain in his office anymore,” the PTI said in a statement. “Hence, he should quit instantly and return PTI’s stolen seats immediately.”
The statement maintained Chattha’s confession of altering results in 13 national and 26 provincial constituencies was an endorsement of PTI’s stance that the public mandate had been compromised and had exposed the real characters involved in the election rigging.
The PTI said all officers involved in the “heinous plan of openly insulting the public mandate, including the CEC and the Chief Justice, should immediately resign after Liaquat Chattha’s statement.”
The chief justice and the election commission have already denied the allegations made by the Rawalpindi commissioner.
Meanwhile, in Islamabad, PTI senior vice president Sher Afzal Marwat led a charged crowd demanding justice for the alleged vote fraud.
“We will not rest until we get justice and get back our stolen public mandate,” he said.
PTI supporters took part in the protest in front of the National Press Club in the federal capital, carrying their party flags, placards inscribed with different slogans and Khan’s photographs.
“We have come here on Khan’s call to protest and get back our mandate,” Shumaila Satti, one of the protesters carrying Khan’s portrait, told Arab News.
“We are protesting because our mandate has been stolen,” said another PTI supporter, Shahid Ali Gandapur. “First, Imran Khan should be released [from prison], and then we will make him the prime minister.”
A similar protest was also held in Lahore where police briefly detained Salman Akram Raja, a renowned lawyer and PTI-backed candidate from NA-128.
“They are arresting me illegally,” he told journalists shortly before being taken away by the police. “I stand with the people and will continue to raise my voice for justice.”
Only a day ago, Raja told the international media in Islamabad he was leading the race by 100,000 votes before he was forced to leave the election office in violation of law. In the morning, he discovered that his opponent had secured 172,000 votes and defeated him.
The PTI shared the video of Raja’s arrest, calling it “Extremely shameful and disgusting act.”
Khan’s party held a small protest in Karachi as well that was led by its Sindh president, Haleem Adil Shaikh, outside the election commission office in the city.
“I am solely a citizen of Karachi,” said a protester who identified himself as Talat Siddiqui. “I am not affiliated with any political party, but I voted for PTI, and I believe it’s my right to ask for a fair vote count. My vote should be counted, and it was either not counted or counted incorrectly.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters from PTI and other Baloch and Pashtun nationalist parties also poured into the streets of Pakistan’s southwestern Quetta city, demanding the election commission to revisit the outcome of the February 8 polls in their region which they said had been changed during the counting process.
“We won 180 seats which were decreased,” Alam Khan Kakar, additional deputy general secretary of PTI in Balochistan, told Arab News.
The protesters applauded the Rawalpindi commissioner’s statement along with his decision to step down from his position.