Pakistani Official Taped Saying Vote Will Be Rigged
FAISALABAD, Pakistani - A prominent U.S.-based human rights group Friday released what it said was a recording of Pakistan’s attorney general acknowledging that next week’s national elections would be “massively” rigged.
Human Rights Watch said a journalist made the recording during a telephone interview with Attorney General Malik Qayyum when Qayyum took a second call without disconnecting the first, allowing his end of the second conversation to be overheard and recorded.
In the recording, Qayyum, Pakistan’s top legal officer, can be heard advising the caller to accept a ticket he is being offered by an unidentified political party for a seat, Human Rights Watch said.
“They will massively rig to get their own people to win,” Qayyum said, according to a transcript released by Human Rights Watch. “If you get a ticket from these guys, take it.”
The potentially incendiary recording was made the day that elections were announced for Jan. 8, according to Human Rights Watch, which said the Urdu-language recording could be heard on its Web site, www.hrw.org. The polls for the national assembly and four provincial legislatures were postponed until this Monday after large-scale violence ignited by the Dec. 27 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
The recording was certain to add to widespread fears that the polls will be rigged in favor of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, the party that supports the authoritarian and hugely unpopular president, Pervez Musharraf, a retired army general who seized power in a 1999 coup.
On Thursday, Musharraf warned the opposition that it must accept the outcome of Monday’s voting, without resorting to massive street protests.
“Let there be no doubt that anyone will be allowed to resort to lawlessness in the garb of allegations about rigging in the elections,” Musharraf was quoted as telling a seminar of government officials in Islamabad by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan. “Let this serve as a warning to all those who think they can disturb the peace of the country. They will not be allowed. Do not test the resolve of the government.”
“No agitation, anarchy or chaos can be acceptable,” he said. “I assure you that the elections will be fair, free, and transparent and peaceful.”
Fears that the polls will be fixed have been stoked by a series of public opinion surveys showing the Pakistan Peoples Party and other parties poised to capture enough seats to begin impeachment proceedings against Musharraf for controversial constitutional changes he imposed last year to extend his grip on power.
Musharraf’s standing, and that of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, also has been hurt by skyrocketing prices, shortages of electricity, gas and wheat, a failure to contain the Islamic insurgency based in the tribal area bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan’s support for the Bush administration’s fight against al Qaida.
“There have been numerous allegations of irregularities, including arrests and harassment of opposition candidates and party members. There are also allegations that state resources, administration, and state machinery are being used to the advantage of candidates backed by President Pervez Musharraf,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
Human Rights Watch said it had tried repeatedly to contact Qayyum, a staunch supporter of Musharraf, but had been unable to reach him.
On Thursday, the widower of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zadari, held a final campaign rally in the same dusty park where his wife gave her first political address in 1977.
Security was intense, reflecting a surge in suicide bombings that’s included attacks on opposition campaign rallies. Police sharpshooters scanned the crowds from rooftops and black-clad commandos stood among scores of security men deployed around the stage.
The stage itself was set far back from fences of steel scaffolding and barbed wire that restrained the flag- and banner-waving crowd of about 6,000. Zadari spoke from behind a podium made of bulletproof glass and steel.
Without mentioning Musharraf by name, Zardari, who assumed joint chairmanship of the party with his son after Bhutto’s slaying, said that it was time “to change our system.”
“Benazir was a martyr. She believed in you, in the brothers and sisters, and I also believe in you,” he proclaimed.
© 2008 McClatchy Newspapers
I don’t know how much of this you hear about in the US but here is a rundown:
Supreme Court, sacked and arrested.
Main opposition leader, shot and killed.
News media, censored.
So, you say the vote might be rigged? Well how else do you expect to get a US puppet leader put in charge? The Pakistanis are an educated people and will not willingly support someone who does not act on behalf of their interests. If the Pakistani army betrays them, they will turn increasingly to their homegrown Islamic fighters.
karl rove is working for musharraf now?
Diebold is doing business in Pakistan now?
He must have used Bush’s national security directive no. 51 as a model.
I’ll bet Bush is watching for more ideas to use to compromise our elections (if any)
I bet Bush and his buddies at Diebold are behind the rigging, just like in Mexico
Just curious, has anyone affirmed the translation? Question everything and all that… although I don’t really doubt that it’s true.
I doubt the media will forget about armed revolution in Pakistan the way they forget about Kenya.
America’s democracy is spreading around the world.
Maybe we should spread our democracy to China. Those Diebold machines are made in China come to think of it. Maybe the Chinese are rigging them?
You know what I think is funny… all the posts on this article make light of the fact that the US elections were totally rigged and stolen both in 2000 and 2004… yet the people that stole the elections are still in power. Some democracy you guys have… and then on a different thread, some ignorant American has the gall to say I live in a “piss-ant” country. Seems to me, the US is the piss-ant country and the people cowardly by not opposing this unelected criminal government.
@elmysterio
It is extremely imperative not to box people in. There are many Americans who are opposing our unelected criminal government. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are working toward impeaching both the president and vice president.
Those Americans that are not participating have been efficiently brainwashed by the legacy of Bernays and his corporate propaganda and have been deterred by our police state. The focus needs to be on educating the public on what is going on and what is at stake.
Commentary will not change anything, only action.
I’m sure Karl Rove, Jeb Bush and Antonin Scalia are standing by to give advice to their buddy Perv, who scarcely needs the lessons.
Retired General, acting cantankerous without his ‘second skin’ the uniform has no choice but to manipulate the election results in favour of his handpicked party PML-Q. Therein lies his survival. Holed up in the army house that he should have relinquished on removing his second skin, he must survive at all cost. Therefore, there is hardly any doubt that elections will be thoroughly rigged.
elmysterio - There are many ways to subvert authority. May I propose that some here besides posting are actually trying not to be cowards every day? Not being a coward is as difficult to prove as being one is to justify.
elmysterio, what can I do?
jlocke
NO! An Assassination in Pakistan and lawyers arrested en masse? Please, my, When? Why? Who? Noooo..
I do hope that was a tongue in cheek post, as was mine.
“Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th.”
–President George W. Bush, speaking to the United Nations.