A top Pakistani bureaucrat has said he helped rig Pakistan's election, a week after polls marred by rigging allegations failed to produce a clear winner.
On Saturday, Liaqat Ali Chattha, commissioner of the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where the country's powerful army is headquartered, said he would surrender to police and resign from his post.
“We turned losers into winners, reversing margins of 70,000 votes in 13 seats in the National Assembly,” he told reporters, also implicating the head of the electoral commission and the country's top judge.
According to Pakistan's Dawn News, the commissioner admitted that he was “deeply involved in serious crimes such as the 2024 mega election rigging” and said that “stabbing the country in the back” is keeping him up at night.
“I should be punished for the injustice I have committed and others who were involved in this injustice should also be punished,” he added.
After Chattha's announcement, Rawalpindi Senior Superintendent of Police Operations Kamran Asghar told Dawn that the commissioner had not been arrested as no case had been filed against him.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's election commission rejected Chattha's allegations but said in a statement that it would “conduct an investigation.”
In a press release, the election watchdog also said that none of its officials ever gave instructions to Chattha for a “change in the election results.”
But a leading advocacy group, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said this confession revealed that “the involvement of the state bureaucracy in manipulation in Pakistan is beginning to be exposed.”
Thousands of people protest
Meanwhile, on Saturday, thousands of people demonstrated in more than a dozen cities, including the capital Islamabad, alleging the vote was rigged.
Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder reported from Islamabad that tens of thousands came out to protest even though the government had imposed a restriction on public gatherings.
“People come from all walks of life. Women, children and entire families… have gathered at the Islamabad Press Club. They say that their mandate has been stolen and that the government is trying to put an illegitimate government that lost the elections in power.”
After nearly a week of political drama following a fractured mandate delivered by the country's voters in the February 8 elections, a six-party alliance led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN), which won 75 seats, and The Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which won 54 seats, will form the next government.
However, according to official results, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, currently imprisoned for multiple convictions, emerged as a clear winner of the elections, with a total of 93 seats. .
'Incriminating'
In a post on Chattha will retire on March 13.
“The person has alleged that the PMLN candidates were pressured to give a lead of 70, 70,000, while the facts are completely different from his allegation,” the political party said.
However, from prison, PTI's Khan called Chattha's confession “incriminating”.
“His statement serves as a stark revelation of the systematic manipulation of election results across the country, where the PTI's significant advantages were deceptively manipulated into losses, depriving the people of their legitimate mandate, not only in the National Assembly but also in the Provincial Assemblies,” Khan said in a post on social media platform X.
“The PTI also calls for a fair investigation and meaningful trial of all those involved in this brazen theft of mandates,” he added.
A senior PTI official, Ali Muhammad Khan, told reporters in Islamabad that Chattha's statement showed that his party was misled. “We must be given back our mandate,” he said.
