Pakistan polls will be free and fair: EC

She has objected about the setting up of “ghost” or improvised polling stations, bulk transfers of officials and a plan to steal thousands of ballot papers ahead of the election for the pro-government candidates.

Another former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who returned from exile from Saudi Arabia on November 25, has been demanding other opposition groups boycott the elections arguing that the vote will not be fair and transparent.

But voting watchdogs insisted that the opposition’s fears are unfounded.

“The Election Commission is a constitutional body and it is fully independent to hold free, fair and transparent polls,” the commission’s secretary Kanwar Dilshad said.

“The entire election exercise is absolutely free, fair and transparent,” he said.

“More than 95 per cent of polling stations will be in schools or government buildings, but in some areas where there is no proper building, polling stations are established in tents or some other premises,” Dilshad said.

He said such a move was not new and that improvised polling stations would be set up in consultation with the contesting candidates.

Addressing allegations that thousands of ballot papers would be stolen, Dilshad said they would be handed over to officials by January 5 and “there is no question of somebody getting hold of them.”

A committee set up by the parties of the two ex-premiers to draft the “charter of demands” began its maiden session on Tuesday and was to meet again on Wednesday afternoon.

“Yesterday we had a preliminary round in which we agreed that the entire electoral process was based on rigging and fraud,” Sharif’s spokesman Ahsan Iqbal said.

“The current system was not leading us towards free and transparent elections,” he added.

He said that it was also agreed that instead of Musharraf “dictating” his terms of elections, political forces should set the rules for the conduct of impartial and fair elections.