(Islamabad) A senior official admitted on Saturday that he had helped rig Pakistan’s legislative elections, a week after the poll which resulted in a government coalition agreement.
Liaqat Ali Chattha, commissioner of the garrison town of Rawalpindi, where the headquarters of the country’s powerful army is located, said he would surrender to police.
Widespread allegations of fraud were made after authorities cut off the country’s mobile phone network on election day and counting took more than 24 hours.
Mr. Chattha confessed that he oversaw vote rigging in Rawalpindi. “We transformed losers into winners, reversing margins of 70,000 votes for 13 seats in the National Assembly,” he told the press.
“For having committed such a heinous crime, I will hand myself in to the police,” he added, also implicating the head of the electoral commission and the highest magistrate in the country.
The electoral commission rejected Mr Chattha’s allegations, but promised in a statement that it would “conduct an investigation”.
The legislative elections on February 8 produced an unexpected result for supporters of former cricket star and ex-prime minister Imran Khan, currently in prison. Despite the repression ordered by the army against them, they obtained the greatest number of seats in the National Assembly.
But without an absolute majority and refusing any alliance, they witnessed last Tuesday the announcement of the creation of a coalition excluding them, by Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), which came in second place.
The PML-N, supported by the military, joined forces with Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and minor parties to form the next government.