Pakistani Official Taped Saying Vote Will Be Rigged

[acmavm]

Published on Friday, February 15, 2008 by McClatchy

<snip>

Pakistani Official Taped Saying Vote Will Be Rigged
by Jonathan S. Landay

FAISALABAD, Pakistani - A prominent U.S.-based human rights group Friday released what it said was a recording of Pakistan’s attorney general acknowledging that next week’s national elections would be “massively” rigged.

Human Rights Watch said a journalist made the recording during a telephone interview with Attorney General Malik Qayyum when Qayyum took a second call without disconnecting the first, allowing his end of the second conversation to be overheard and recorded.

<snip>

The potentially incendiary recording was made the day that elections were announced for Jan. 8, according to Human Rights Watch, which said the Urdu-language recording could be heard on its Web site, www.hrw.org. The polls for the national assembly and four provincial legislatures were postponed until this Monday after large-scale violence ignited by the Dec. 27 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

<snip>

Fears that the polls will be fixed have been stoked by a series of public opinion surveys showing the Pakistan Peoples Party and other parties poised to capture enough seats to begin impeachment proceedings against Musharraf for controversial constitutional changes he imposed last year to extend his grip on power.

Musharraf’s standing, and that of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, also has been hurt by skyrocketing prices, shortages of electricity, gas and wheat, a failure to contain the Islamic insurgency based in the tribal area bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan’s support for the Bush administration’s fight against al Qaida.

-MORE-

edit: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/15/7089/

[tekisui]

1. If it is rigged, there will be blood in the streets.

The PPP will do all they can to oust mushy.