The widespread rigging allegations that have swirled around the February 8 election ever since it was held have refused to die down. This has coincided with PTI chairman Imran Khan’s coming his closest yet to aligning his stance with that of the Army on the May 9 attacks last year on military installations. While talking to the media in Adiala Jail on Wednesday, he said that the Corps Commanders Conference was right to demand that the perpetrators be brought to justice, but he said that perpetrators be arrested on the basis of CCTV footage. He did not mention his earlier claim that the attacks were carried out by crowds instigated by agents provocateurs. The Corps Commanders did not mention the claim that Mr Khan had planned the attack. Mr Khan has so far not been tried on the charges against him that his party workers had carried out the attacks in response to his arrest, under a strategy previously planned and which had been approved, so none of the evidence against him has come to court.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency has characterized the recent election as less fair than that of either 2014 or 2018. It has thus called for a probe by the Election Commission of Pakistan into several election-related matters, such as the delays in transmission, consolidation and announcement of results. There are two issues with what is otherwise an obvious proposal: first, the ECP itself is a party in some of these issues; second, the PTI does not accept the neutrality of the ECP, and thus would be unlikely to accept the results of any ECP probe.
The PML(N) government should know only too well how corrosive the accusation of election rigging can be. When it was thrown into the opposition after the 2013 election, it accused the PTI government of having benefited from that rigging, until ultimately it used that to overturn the PTI majority by bringing to its side the PTI’s allies. Now it finds itself in that situation, with not just minor parties on its side, but the PPP. It should not forget that the PTI based its 2014 dharna on the premise that the 2013 elections were rigged. It should not wait on the judgement of history. There may be some satisfaction for PPP supporters that the Supreme Court has found that there were flaws in the trial of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, but coming as it does so many decades after his hanging, that would be cold comfort. The PTI and PML(N) both want immediate satisfaction.
