PPP Central Election Cell Incharge Senator Taj Haider has said that the Result Transmission System (RTS) was not responsible for not taking signatures of 95% of polling agents of candidates on Result Forms 45 after throwing them out of polling stations.

In a press statement issued on Wednesday, he said that it was unfortunate that the alleged RTS failure issue has once again been brought to the forefront by the Election Commission of Pakistan and a blame game has started to cover up the most obvious and blatant rigging systematically carried out in Election 2018.

He pointed out that IT system do save time and ensure transparency but if the inputs are rigged and manipulated the output results would be no better. “Even if, as alleged RTS had failed, conventional methods of preparing provisional and final results could have easily worked but only if counting of votes was done in presence of polling  agents and forms 45 were signed by them. It is a pity that only 128 forms 45 out of more than 78000 have been signed by polling agents of candidates belonging to political parties,” he added. 

He said in the case of PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who was contesting from 3 NA constituencies only 2 forms 45 have been signed by his polling agents in all the 3 constituencies.

Senator Taj Haider said that if ECP was seriously interested in free and fair elections, it should be looking into hurdles created for National/International observers, Pressure brought upon candidates to change parties, curbs on media, census fraud and delimitations, Role of religious extremists, all of which were parts of pre-poll rigging.

For rigging committed on polling day ECP should investigate the reasons behind its non-responsiveness on complaints, slow polling rate. Media coverage of Prime Minister ‘select’, the vote count, events in Lyari constituency from where Chairman PPP was a candidate, the electoral hoax in Turbat and many other constituencies in Baluchistan and the role of judiciary.

Senator Taj Haider advised the ECP to look into the shortcomings pointed out as well as forensic audits done by national and international observers in their reports. They were not allowed entry in many polling stations, but it cannot be said that they left polling stations after seeing that they were losing.

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