(Ed: An interesting academic review of a paper on the systematic erosion of Military influence on the political landscape in Brazil. Provides an interesting historical parallel for our nation to learn from.)
Written by: Wendy Hunter
Reviewed by: Hendrik Kraay
Not very many years ago, military regimes were firmly established throughout much of Latin America; men in uniform appeared to have taken out permanent leases on presidential palaces. Volumes analyzing "bureaucratic authoritarianism" or the "new authoritarianism" (as distinct from caudillismo) piled up, often introduced with assurances that, "[f]or the forseeable future at least," such regimes would remain prominent features of the political landscape." [1]
Then the generals resolved, perhaps reluctantly, to turn over the reins of power to civilians, but many expected that such governments would be short-lived or subject to long-term tutelage by officers. Early on in Brazil's redemocratization, it seemed perfectly reasonable to conclude that "the Armed Forces ... seem likely to continue their prominent role in governing Brazil."[2] Now, a decade after the generals gave up power, military influence on Brazilian politics has ebbed to lows unimaginable but a few years ago. Wendy Hunter undertakes the task of explaining why in Eroding Military Influence in Brazil.
Her answer is engagingly simple: democratic electoral politics unleashes a competitive dynamic in which politicians find it necessary to cater to interests other than the military who, after all, field few votes. As a result, even right-wing politicians pay more attention to workers than to soldiers; military budgets shrink as spending on social programs or patronage grows; environmentalists and Indian-rights activists stymie elaborate plans for border fortifications in the Amazon, leaving officers to fulminate against internationalist conspiracies.
Hunter develops her argument in six chapters and then, in a long conclusion, applies her model to Argentina, Chile, and Peru. Her focus is on the presidencies of Jos� � Sarney, Fernando Collor de Mello, and Itamar Franco (1985-94). Her sources include the principal Brazilian newspapers and newsmagazines and interviews with participants (but there is no indication of how many interviews she was able to conduct).
The extensive prerogatives that the military maintained during the transition to civilian rule constitute the baseline against which Hunter measures subsequent change. In 1985, the military enjoyed six cabinet posts (the three service ministries of army, navy, air force; head of the president's military household; chief of the armed forces general staff; and the head of the intelligence service), control over the pol�cia militar, a 1979 amnesty for officers involved in torture, and a series of informal understandings with civilian politicians to ensure the upholding of the amnesty and the maintenance of a military role in internal security, among other things.
The following chapter analyzes the military's failure to protect many of these prerogatives, while subsequent chapters examine the limited ability of officers to use those that remained to impose their policy preferences in three important areas: labor rights, budget allocations, and Amazonian development. Although no civilian ministry of defense was created, the military lost direct control over intelligence and the militarized police; the remaining military ministers became increasingly marginal figures in the cabinet. During the writing of the 1988 constitution, the military failed to win the continuation of extensive restrictions to the right to strike established under the dictatorship. Military budgets have declined steadily since 1985 (although off-budget allocations make precise calculations difficult). Finally, the military's elaborate Calha Norte program of fortifying and developing Brazil's Amazonian border fell to a combination of greater concern for both the environment and indigenous rights, particularly those of the Yanomami, as well as the continued military budget crisis.
What explains these outcomes? Why did institutional guarantees and prerogatives fail to ensure the military's continuing influence in these fundamental areas? Using a rational choice framework, Hunter argues that institutions were subject to considerable and continual change in the post-1985 environment of competitive electoral politics. The military could not institutionalize or "freeze" their power at its 1985 level. Rational politicians who sought to enhance their individual well-being contested the military and worked to reduce its spheres of influence. They were compelled to make populist appeals to garner votes from the enormous lower-class electorate; needing resources for patronage, they found it necessary to reduce military spending; desiring to implement broad popularity-enhancing programs, they sought to expand their political autonomy. In short, a sort of invisible hand guides competitive electoral politics to produce a desirable outcome of reduced military influence.
In her conclusion, Hunter sounds a note of caution. The fuller institutionalization of civilian control over the military--the establishment of a civilian ministry of defense or effective legislative oversight of defense policy, for instance--poses a "collective action" dilemma for Brazilian politicians. While all civilian politicians might benefit from such policies, the weaknesses of Brazil's political parties and the fractious nature of congress militate against such an outcome. Revisions of electoral rules to strengthen political parties and the establishment of a parliamentary system of government (rejected in the 1993 plebiscite) would, according to Hunter, improve the prospect of long-term stable civilian control over Brazil's military (pp. 141-46).
Finally, Hunter applies her model to Chile, Argentina, and Peru, finding in each case that competitive electoral politics led to a reduction of military influence on politics. In Chile, a more solidly institutionalized military regime faced a stronger political party system in which the center-left engaged in a coordinated strategy of reducing military influence without overly antagonizing the armed forces. The Argentine generals relinquished power from a position of abject weakness, facilitating Ra�l Alfons�n's policy of reducing defense expenditure, prosecuting officers for human rights abuses, and curtailing the military's political prerogatives, all highly popular measures.
In Peru, a dramatic decline in military influence took place under the populist government of Alan Garc�a, with assumption of civilian control over several formerly military-dominated areas of policy-making, the creation of a Ministry of Defense, punishment for human rights violations in the counter-insurgency campaign, and reductions in military spending. During the profound and protracted crisis that prompted President Alberto Fujimori to stage his own coup against constitutional democracy, however, the military regained much previously lost influence but, as Hunter stresses, this came at the behest of a civilian president (p. 167).
One of this book's strengths is its subtle and nuanced understanding of military influence in politics. Hunter examines the complex dynamics of policy formation in several key areas, identifies military policy preferences, and assesses the extent to which civilian politicians acceeded to officers' desires. She has been careful to avoid the tautology of defining democracy as the complete absence of interference by non-elected groups such as military officers (p. 6); rather, her goal is to document the changing level of military influence. For heuristic and comparative purposes, she even reduces all of her evidence for Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Peru to a line graph (p. 170)!
Hunter's book provides a useful account of Brazilian civil-military relations after 1985; her portrayal of Fernando Collor de Mello is a striking reminder of the hope that Brazilians had invested in the first directly-elected president since 1960 and his early progressive measures: demarcating the Yanomami reservation and evicting gold prospectors from it, starving the Calha Norte program, curtailing the nuclear weapons program by opening the country's facilities to international inspection, and cutting weapons development programs. Collor's electoral mandate and his determination to enact neo-liberal reforms led him to challenge entrenched power groups, including the military as he sought the autonomy necessary to implement his program (p. 128).
That the armed forces stood aside during Collor's impeachment, letting both popular demonstrations and congressional investigations into the massive corruption scandal run their course, marked a significant shift, given officers' predilections for intervening in crises during the 1945-64 period (p. 23). Why this should have been so is unclear. Hunter notes that, in mid-1982, the embattled administration released previously-cut funds to the armed forces (p. 112) but unfortunately does not pursue this historical comparison further.
Where Hunter does look backward, she draws out intriguing precedents to the 1985-94 period, particularly the declining military budget share during 1945-64, which she attributes to the imperatives of electoral politics (pp. 100-102). A more systematic analysis of past crises and tendencies might have resulted in a more durable book. Hunter has ably identified a trend that few foresaw a decade ago, but, as she demonstrates with her Peruvian comparison, such trends can be abruptly reversed. Indeed, short-term perspectives have led to more than a few predictions about militaries in politics suddenly proven wrong, as Alain Rouqui�, one of the most thoughtful scholars of Latin American militaries, pointed out long ago.[3]
More important, Hunter's dynamic can only take place in a favorable larger environment. While she certainly acknowledges the importance of the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the radical Left, and the manifest failure of the military's economic project in reshaping the Brazilian political terrain, these may have been necessary prerequisites for the dynamic of electoral politics to reduce military influence.
At the risk of sounding like the obtuse reviewers who take hapless authors to task for not writing a different book, it is nevertheless worth reflecting on some evidence buried in a footnote (p. 179, n. 49). According to a survey conducted in late 1993 and early 1994, not one of 320 members of elite sectors (government, business, union, and political leaders) selected "the threat of military intervention" as an obstacle to democracy; the most common choices were "low educational level of the population" and "high levels of poverty and social inequality." The former and especially the latter existed in Brazil well before the ancesters of some of those elites called a recognizable military into being to defend their interests. Military participation in politics may well have more to do with class structure and dominant groups' calculations about how best to maintain their position than a dynamic of electoral politics abstracted from the larger social structure. After all, had Lula defeated Collor in the 1989 runoff (a distinct possiblity until close to the end of the campaign), could this book even have been written?
Two historical errors should be set straight (p. 32): Both the war (army) minister and the navy minister sat in Brazilian cabinets from the 1820s, not the 1920s. The air force, however, was not separated from the army until 1941, when its first minister (incidentally, a civilian) joined the cabinet.
This book is written in clear, jargon-free prose with convenient chapter summaries. Those considering it for classroom use should, however, be warned of the seventy-seven acronyms that garnish its pages, a serving of alphabet soup to which undergraduates will certainly turn up their noses, as well as the small number of Portuguese words used in the text for which a glossary is not supplied.
Notes:
[1]. James M. Malloy, "Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America: The Modal Pattern," in Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), p. 3.
[2]. Thomas G. Sanders, "Brazil in 1980: The Emerging Political Model," in Authoritarian Capitalism: Brazil's Contemporary Economic and Political Development, ed. Thomas C. Bruneau and Philippe Faucher (Boulder: Westview, 1981), p. 217.
[3]. Alain Rouqui�, The Military and the State in Latin America, trans. Paul E. Sigmund (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987 [1982]), p. 3.
LAHORE, Pakistan, March 1 (AFP) - A Pakistani anti-terrorism court Saturday acquitted former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's brother of murder, clearing the way for him to contest a by-election, court officials said. The murder charges were brought against Shahbaz Sharif, a former chief minister of Punjab province, after the military toppled the government of Nawaz Sharif in a military coup in October 1999.
“The court ordered the acquittal after petitioners told the judge that they had found that Shahbaz was not behind the murders,” defence lawyer Khawaja Mohammed Haris told AFP. Shahbaz was barred by election authorities from standing in the February 18 election because he was facing the murder charges. His party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), has already said he will contest a by-election due to be held in the next few months. Shahbaz Sharif, who is PML-N president, returned to Pakistan with his brother after seven years in exile. (Posted @ 11:15 PST)
Published On Monday, February 25, 2008 10:44 PM (Harvard Crimson)
By SAMAD KHURRAM
It's not Osama, but Musharraf
The former head of the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence's (ISI) political cell recently confessed that he was responsible for political manipulation in Pakistan's 2002 elections that led to Islamists coming to power in two provinces and gaining 59 seats in the National Assembly.
This fraud was the work of the America's supposedly unfaltering ally in the War on Terror, General (ret.) Pervez Musharraf and his desire to paint an image of Pakistan as an extremely dangerous, unstable country ready to fall into the hands of extremists the moment he leaves.
Musharraf pretends that he is the only hope for the US in Pakistan. Closer analysis, however, suggests that his claims are far from true. In the 2008 elections—which were much freer and fairer than those of 2002—only 6 seats went to the Islamists. In addition, a secular party won the majority of seats from the North-West Frontier Province where the War on Terror is actually taking place.
These results prove that the people of Pakistan are against religious fundamentalism, something the US has largely ignored. In 1999, Pakistan was a stable country with a moderate political party in power. There were no suicide bombings, no abductions by extremists, and people were free to move about without security personnel. By 2007, Pakistan was among the world's most dangerous places. This transformation is the result of Musharraf's long, incompetent rule.
There are many other pieces of evidence to support that Musharraf is not committed to fighting terrorism now, or if he ever was. Musharraf's own speeches and words, such as, "[I am] not going around trying to locate Osama bin Laden and Zawahri, frankly" are the biggest confirmation of his indifference. In addition, Washington has been shocked by news reports that the majority of the funds given to Pakistan are not used for the War on Terror. This news is corroborated by widely available pictures of troops in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas moving around in traditional 'chappals' (open foot shoes) and poor equipment. If even a small portion of the U.S. aid were spent on weapons upgrades, bullet proof jackets, reconnaissance devices and training, the results would have been much better. The Pakistan Army would have performed better: more terrorists caught, fewer casualties and more leads to Osama bin Laden.
Over the past eight years, Pakistan has received $11 billion from the U.S. in direct aid for fighting terrorism, billions from other countries for curbing extremism and development projects, and access to secret intelligence. In response to this, Musharraf has been repeatedly diverting funds in efforts to retain his support within the army, upgrade weapons to be used against India, or pay his supporters and crackdown on political opponents. His long, highly extravagant foreign tours to publicize his book or beg for more aid are hardly helpful in fighting terrorism.
Musharraf's political ambitions have led to many serious lapses and failures in the War on Terror: Rashid Rauf, a high profile terrorist involved in a failed attempt to blow up transatlantic planes, escaped from Pakistani police custody. Militants have been capturing forts and have intercepted NATO's supplies. A radical mosque built up a brigade of terrorists adjacent to the Pakistan Intelligence's building in Islamabad, the capital. The intelligence agencies are not to be blamed; they have more important tasks to do—update files on and blackmail political opponents of Musharraf.
Last November, on the pretext of fighting terrorism a "state of emergency" was declared in Pakistan, and resulted in a country-wide crackdown on the judiciary, media, human rights activists, and anyone who could possibly oppose Musharraf. This was followed by the release of 25 high profile terrorists including former Taliban Defence Minister Mullah Obaidullah, who has close ties to Osama bin Laden and is the highest-ranking Taliban official ever captured. With Musharraf releasing arrested Taliban figures, U.S. taxpayers can be assured the $11 billion pumped into Musharraf's regime has gone to waste.
Musharraf is a major liability in the War on Terror, yet the Bush Administration fails to see this and continues to provide him unfaltering support. However, Musharraf does not have any support in Pakistan, as evidenced by the strong anti-Musharraf vote in the Feb. 18 elections. If the U.S. continues to support Musharraf it will further alienate the people of Pakistan from the War on Terror and augment anti-U.S. sentiments.
When the U.S, backed a highly unpopular dictator in Iran, it back-fired resulting in an extremist Islamic revolution. The world cannot afford a nuclear power like Pakistan to turn into another Iran. The U.S. must use all its capabilities to return Pakistan to the rule of law and to have the Supreme Court judges deposed by Musharraf restored. Musharraf must be tried for his crimes in the War on Terror as well as his crimes against the people of Pakistan by the real Supreme Court of Pakistan. This will send a clear message to the next government that it cannot take the war on terror lightly and that the U.S. will not allow itself to be manipulated by Pakistani leaders.
PAKISTAN President Pervez Musharraf has offered a deal to the winners of last week's elections - to reinstate the chief justice if moves to impeach him in the new parliament are abandoned.
In a sudden backflip, Mr Musharraf reportedly sent an urgent message to Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistan People's Party, offering to restore chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and more than 60 other judges to their posts.
In return, Mr Musharraf, his position increasingly isolated amid signs the US is backing away from his leadership, sought assurances that moves to impeach him would be quashed.
Chief justice Chaudhry has been held under house arrest since the then General Musharraf declared a state of emergency on November 3. His reinstatement, with that of other judges, is regarded as the key issue in Pakistan's political turmoil.
Last week, even after voters had spurned him and the party that supported him, Mr Musharraf boasted he could conceive of no circumstances in which chief justice Chaudhry could be restored to the Supreme Court.
But an official was quoted yesterday as saying that "the presidency is (now) ready to restore the judges provided they don't sit on benches hearing cases against the President".
The official indicated Mr Musharraf had caved in to other key demands from the victorious coalition, saying: "President Musharraf has also agreed to forgo powers of sacking parliament and appointing service chiefs." Sources close to Mr Zardari, widower of assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, said the PPP leader had promised to discuss the offer with the new Government.
It seems unlikely to prove acceptable to the new "grand coalition", which believes that Mr Musharraf has no choice but to accept "the mandate of the people" and quit office after the party aligned to him was beaten in last week's elections.
The offer is also unlikely to be acceptable to the powerful community of lawyers, which has led agitation against Mr Musharraf since he first attempted to sack chief justice Chaudhry on March 9 last year. Coalition leaders and lawyers are demanding the chief justice be restored to hear cases about Mr Musharraf's legitimacy.
Mr Musharraf affirmed yesterday that he had no intention of resigning, telling parliamentarians from his defeated Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid) party: "I am elected for five years and will continue to play my role. I will not resign."
Washington indicated a shift in its support for Mr Musharraf. US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, regarded as the most determined exponent of the Bush administration's embrace of Mr Musharraf, spoke of Washington's support for Pakistan's people rather than the President.
In testimony before the US Senate's foreign relations committee, Mr Negroponte made scant reference to Mr Musharraf, emphasising that the US "looks forward to working with the new Pakistani leadership".
He told senators "Pakistan has been indispensable" in the fight against extremists and that the US "looks forward to working with the leaders who emerge".
LAHORE, Pakistan, Feb 29 (APP): Members of the Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA) and Lahore District Bar Association (LDBA) Friday staged a rally and sit-in protest against the dismissal of Superior Courts judges and urged the newly elected parliamentarians to restore the deposed judges as their first task. The rally was joined on the way by hundreds of workers of political parties including Jamat-i-Islami,Tehrik-i-Insaf and Khaksar Tehrik. They marched to Faisal chowk, in front of Punjab Assembly building, where they chanted slogans and staged a sit-in protest. Imran Khan, Chairman, Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf, addressing the protesters said the first task of elected political parties should be to restore the Constitution of 1973 and the reinstatement of the deposed judges. Earlier, the meetings of general bodies of both LHCBA and LDBA were held at which the lawyers vowed to continue their struggle (Posted @ 17:25 PST)
MULTAN, Pakistan, Feb 29 (PPI): Pakistan Muslim League (N) chairman Makhdoom Javed Hashmi Friday warned that crisis would emerge if the establishment did not accept the Feb.18 mandate. He told newsmen on telephone that president Musharraf's meetings with the PML-Q leadership and appointment of Nawab Zulfiqar Magsi as Balochistan governor, besides recent increase in the prices of ghee and cooking oil, reduction in wheat quota for flour mills and such other steps suggested that the establishment had not accepted the election results wholeheartedly. He agreed with SCBA chief Aitezaz Ahsan that restoration of the sacked judges through two-third majority parliamentary vote would amount to legitimizing the action. He also said that the PPP and PML-N had agreed to the reinstatement of judges and only the modalities were to be finalised. (Posted @ 18:34 PST)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb 29 (AP) - Slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People’s Party set to form Pakistan's next government indicated Friday it will not seek a confrontation with President Pervez Musharraf, who is facing calls from other parties to step down. Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a front rank PPP leader, said his party would move cautiously to prevent fresh turmoil. “Relations with the presidency is a challenge, because as you know the PPP has been talking about a balance of power between the parliament and the presidency,” Qureshi told Dawn News television. “One has to tread carefully ... we do not want confrontation.” At the same time, the PPP wants to clip Musharraf's wings _ primarily by repealing the constitution's Article 58(2)b, which gives the president the right to abolish national and state assemblies. “We will move ahead with a positive mind-set and will try our best to tackle all issues purely on constitutional grounds,” said Makhdoom Amin Fahim, PPP's likely candidate for the prime minister's post. (Posted @ 21:54 PST)
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 29 (AFP) - At least 25 people were killed and 50 wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up Friday during the funeral for a police official in Mangora town of Swat valley in northwest Pakistan, hospital officials said. “Fifteen bodies have been brought to the hospital and there are 40 others injured,” hospital official Hakeem Khan earlier told AFP. Hundreds of people were attending the funeral of Deputy Superintendent of Police Javed Iqbal when the bombing took place, security officials said. (Posted @ 22:00 PST Updated @ 23:16 PST)
Lahore, February 25: While welcoming the people's verdict of February 18, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has demanded immediate convening of the newly elected National and Provincial Assemblies and transfer of power to majority parties / coalitions so that the peoples' wishes for a change in the Presidency and restoration of judges could be expeditiously addressed. In a statement issued here today, HRCP said:
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) welcomes the people's verdict of February 18 and felicitates them on foiling the designs of the various elements that wanted to interfere with the electoral process through threats of violence, illicit influence, blackmail and bribery. This does not affect HRCP's censure of large-scale manipulation of the electoral process before the polling day and the Election Commission's failure to rise to the minimum acceptable standards of efficiency and respect for democratic imperatives. But these matters, as well as irregularities noticed during and after the polling, will be taken up in due course. At the moment all attention needs to be devoted to the possibility of transition to democratic and responsible governance created by the election result, and more importantly by the acceptance of this result by the people as well as all political groups, including those who boycotted the polls.
There is no doubt that the people have not only voted against the erstwhile ruling party, they have in effect rejected the 9-year-old regime, its performance and its presiding deity. A sincere acceptance of the election result leaves President Musharraf with no option except his withdrawal from political scene. Even if the argument that he has been elected in accordance with law (as amended by himself) is taken seriously, it can be said that his election has been superseded by a broader-based election. The disclosure of General Musharraf's involvement with poll-rigging in the 2002 election by Maj-Gen. Ehtisham Zamir, a former head of the ISI's political cell, has not only strengthened the case for an immediate disbandment of this cell but has made the position of the incumbent head of state much more untenable than ever. HRCP sees no force in the plea against a change in the presidency on the ground that it might affect the war on terror. Indeed the restoration of decision-making powers to popularly elected representatives and their parliament will lend the state actions legitimacy and strength both and the performance of the armed forces in this area also should improve when they realize the importance of democratic sanction for their operations. Above all, resistance to change in the presidency will pollute the political environment, embolden anti-democratic professionals to undermine the national consensus people's and create unwarranted obstacles to the resumption of the democratic journey.
In order to speedily conclude the electoral process it is essential that the new National Assembly and the Provincial Assemblies must be convened as early as feasible as any undue delay will amount to a defiance of the popular will. The many crises Pakistan faces demand the earliest possible transfer of power to the newly elected representatives of the people. The issues at the top of the national agenda – restoration of the judges with due guarantees of the independence of the judiciary, removal of the provinces' grievances against the centre, rationalization of the campaign against militants and extremists – must be addressed sooner rather than later.
Further, there is no gainsaying that any tendency to put the common citizens aspirations for bread, job, and a decent living – on the back burner will undo the recent gains by democracy and cause dangerous frustration to the masses.
Finally, HRCP wishes to hail the beginning of the end of the people's alienation from policies and hopes that the country's principal parties will help this trend by establishing rule by as large a democratic consensus as possible.
Iqbal Haider
Secretary General
Asma Jahangir
Chairperson
Karachi, Feb 22, 2008: While welcoming the results of the generalelections of February 18, the People's Resistance noted that theoverall results came about despite massive pre-poll manipulation inthe form of compromising the independence of judiciary and media,illegal transfers and postings, and an incomplete and flawed electoralroll. PR also strongly condemned the widespread rigging itself thatmarked the February 18 polls in Karachi and called for action againstthose involved in the manipulation of votes cast that day.
Independent reports confirm overstuffing of ballot boxes, highervolume of votes despite low turnout, harassment at the pollingstations, voting without ID card, absence of voters' names on theelectoral list and the overwhelming presence of a certain party'sworkers across a large number of polling stations in the city.According to one report, some polling stations registered 140% votersturnout despite a low turnout generally witnessed in the city.
Peoples Resistance has many individual testimonies complaining ofharassment, rigging and being coerced to vote in a certain party'sfavour. Voters complained that their ballot papers were alreadystamped on the 'kite' symbol, that they were not provided privacy atthe polling booths that the presiding officers themselves asked votersto stamp the 'kite' symbol. Many gave in to the presiding officers'coercion, afraid to risk a confrontation, especially in theoverwhelming presence of the party's activists at the polling booths.Voters also complained that they were handed over up to 50 ballotpapers to stamp against their ID cards. "I was asked to stamp the kitesymbol on all of them," said one voter.
A Karachi-based party's victory by huge margin also raises questionsabout the transparency of the polling process. There have been reportsof the Party getting 65,000 votes from areas where it had earlierreceived not more than 4,000 votes. Not surprisingly, their opponentshave challenged the results of a number of constituencies, including:NA-241, 249, 250 and 253, and PS-92, 110, 111, 112, 126 and 127.
Terming these irregularities as a mockery of an importantconstitutional exercise, the People's Resistance said that thewidespread rigging reported from Karachi puts into question thecredibility of these results. We condemn blatant harassment of voterswho were bullied into voting for a certain party while theadministration provided no protection against such coercion.
PR also denounced the administration's inefficiency that added to thevoters' miseries. Voters complained of their names missing from thevoters list even though they had registered their names earlier. Theywere made to run between different polling stations and misguided bypresiding officers adding to their difficulties.
PR called for action against biased presiding officers who werewitnessed stamping the ballot papers. "Presiding officers abused theirpower and authority. Instead of facilitating voters, they harassedvoters and did the bidding for one political party, which is aviolation of the EC's code of conduct," said a PR statement.
PR said that the hijacking of Feb 18 polls has shaken the public'strust in this important democratic exercise. Despite security threats,the public came out to cast their votes because they saw the Feb 18polls as a hope for a democratic transition. Those who attemptedrigging on polling day challenged public's constitutional right tomake its choice. These elements must be brought to book. Disputedconstituencies must have a re-election since elections in thoseconstituencies violated all electoral rules and their non-transparentresults cannot be accepted.
