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Posted by admin in Nawaz 's Dauphin, Nawaz Dangerous, Nawaz Sharif & Kashmiri Biradari, Nawaz Sharif Dangerous Man, NAWAZ SHARIF DICTATOR, NAWAZ SHARIF FAMILY TURPITUDE, NAWAZ SHARIF LOAN SCAM, Nawaz Sharif Massive Corruption, NAWAZ SHARIF MUZZLES PRESS, NAWAZ SHARIF US CIA ASSET IN PAKISTAN, Nawaz Sharif-The Prime Minister from Hell, NAWAZ SHARIF: THE LOOTER on January 4th, 2014
“Voter Hadi Buksh, son of Khanpur district resident Saki Jatoi, voted 310 times for the women’s only polling station No. 209,” read the tribunal’s report. PHOTO: APP/FILE
ISLAMABAD: While the government has been accusing the opposition of needlessly creating controversy over magnetic ink, it seems the issue is much larger than previously thought.
Despite doubts over the effectiveness of the magnetic ink and whether the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) was capable of verifying thumb impressions, the ink has yielded results according to an election tribunal’s report.
The tribunal, which had been tasked with probing irregularities in NA-202 Shikarpur-I, discovered that one voter in the constituency had cast votes a staggering 310 times.
“Voter Hadi Buksh, son of Khanpur district resident Saki Jatoi, voted 310 times for the women’s only polling station No. 209,” read the tribunal’s report, removing doubt over NADRA’s ability to verify thumb impressions on votes.
“There is no doubt this revelation was made possible due to the use of magnetic ink,” a senior official of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) told The Express Tribune. “The credit goes to the ECP, NADRA and the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR) for coming up with the idea,” he said. PCSIR had prepared the special ink on the request of the ECP. The request was made on the basis of a suggestion by NADRA. The ink was approved by NADRA after several tests, but their results were never disclosed.
According to sources, NADRA has also developed a system to verify thumb impressions on as many as 100,000 votes a day. They said the authority had set up a special cell in this regard, which comprises 150 employees who are under oath to abstain from any interaction with the media or anyone else.
The cell, the sources added, will continue its work even if incumbent chairman Tariq Malik – whose removal by the government has been stayed by the Islamabad High Court – is forced to leave the office.
“The ECP is happy with the discovery and is waiting for the election tribunal to decide the fate of the person identified [as responsible for the multiple votes],” the ECP official said. “A person involved in voting irregularities has been caught for the first time and should receive exemplary punishment.”
He added that if the ECP found the punishment awarded by the tribunal as lacking, it would take “suo motu notice and award punishment which will set a precedent.”
“Although the matter is sub judice and we don’t want to put pressure on the election tribunals, we ask them to award exemplary punishment in such cases.”
Responding to a question, he said that while the use of magnetic ink has become controversial, the commission has found a direction and is moving on the right path.
“We should not overlook the positive aspect that we have developed a system… a deterrent which will make people think twice before carrying out any foul play in elections,” he said. The official added that the magnetic ink would be standardised for the upcoming local government elections in three provinces.
But as optimism prevails in the ECP, the Lahore High Court has barred NADRA from verifying thumb impressions in NA-118 Lahore. The authority had been asked to carry out the process by the election tribunal set up for the constituency. The court stayed the process after Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz lawmaker Riaz Malik – who secured victory in the constituency – contended that there was no legal provision for verifying votes through thumbprints.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 30th, 2013.
Posted by admin in Asif Zardari Crook Par Excellance, Corruption, Extrajudicial Killings by PPP Government, Looters and Scam Artists, Pakistan's Hall of Shame, ZARDAR'S CORRUPTION on March 17th, 2013
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari is corrupt and plotted his brother-in-law’s death, claimed Fatima Bhutto, the niece of Zardari’s late wife, Benazir Bhutto, in an interview on a visit to Paris Saturday.
Fatima Bhutto doesn’t mince words when it comes to Asif Ali Zardari, widower of her aunt Benazir Bhutto and the current president of Pakistan.
“It’s not the first time that criminals have come to lead nations but it is distressing to watch the White House, 10 Downing Street [the UK], the European Union support a man who before he became the president was fighting corruption cases in Switzerland and Spain and England and four charges of murder in Pakistan,” she says.
Well, at least she’s not satirising the president, an offence which, she has just told the audience at Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Co’s literary festival, now carries a sentence of six to 13 years in jail.
Bhutto holds Zardari responsible for the 1996 murder of her father, Murtaza, the subject of her book Songs of Blood and Sword, from which she has just read to the festival audience.
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The future president served time from 1997 to 2004 on corruption and murder charges relating to that case and others. He was freed by a judge who declared the charges false and Zardari and his supporters claim that the charges were politically motivated.
The current Pakistani president has served two other terms in jail, having won the nickname “Mr Ten Per Cent” for his alleged propensity for corruption when serving as a minister in his wife’s first government from 1987-1990. As Fatima Bhutto points out, both Benazir and Zardari have faced corruption cases outside Pakistan. The Swiss case was dropped in 2008, on the request of the Pakistani government, but corruption officials have now asked for it to be reopened.
Fatima Bhutto tends to believe all the accusations against her uncle by marriage, who became president after the fall of General-President Pervez Musharraf and the assassination of Benazir on her return from exile in 2007.
She doesn’t seem to believe that he has changed his ways once in office, either, even if she can cite no evidence at the moment.
“Unfortunately, the information comes after they tend to leave power but, you know, certainly the corruption seems to be carrying on unhindered,” she says.
“It’s a country that’s facing 20-hour electricity cuts in the winter and 23-hour cuts in the summer. There’s intense censorship in the country … So I think, unfortunately, we don’t have any evidence to the contrary.”
Zardari inherited his political legitimacy – and thus the presidency – from his wife. She was prime minister twice and led of the People’s Party (PPP), a position she in turn inherited from her father and Fatima’s grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. His premiership in the 1970s was brought to an end by a military coup and his own execution, allegedly on the orders of military dictator Muhammad Zia ul-Haq.
Two of Fatima’s uncles have also been killed, so it is a dangerous business being a Bhutto. But it also means that you are part of one of the five families which have a stranglehold on Pakistan’s politics.
The PPP clearly intends the dynasty to continue. Before her death, Benazir made it clear that her son, Bilawal, should succeed her. Despite the fact that he is currently studying at Britain’s Oxford University and has limited political experience, the party dutifully appointed him joint chairman along with his father after his mother’s death.
Fatima Bhutto did not go into politics. She chose writing, inspired, she says, by books like Malcolm X’s autobiography, British journalist Robert Fisk’s book on Lebanon Pity the Nationand the novels The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird.
And, although her mother heads a breakaway faction of the PPP, she lambasts the control of the country’s economy by 27 families and its politics by five.
“I think absolutely it’s time for all the dynasties to butt out and it’s time for the field to be opened up beyond five families or six families.”
So who would take over?
“Well, the people, you know. In a county of 180 million people there have to be more choices than just the usual suspects.”
“Pakistani women, they’ve got guts,” she told the book fanciers’ gathering.
It even claimed that Zardari visited Taliban leaders in jail and promised them support in operations, once they were released. That charge has been hotly denied by the government and greeted with scepticism by many commentators.
“To assume that that’s ended miraculously I think is a bit naïve,” comments Fatima Bhutto, who appeals to world powers to pull out of her country.
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