Rs 3,000
Citizen’s Group on Electoral Process CGEP has termed the pre-electoral process leading up to General Election 2008 to be highly unfair. In a CGEP Pre-Election Assessment Report with a Score Card on Pre-Poll Fairness, the Group, which has been meeting since December 2006 under the auspices of PILDAT, has carried out a systematic and continuous review of the Pre-poll electoral process spanning over a period of around 13 months starting from December 2006 up to December 31, 2007. “A careful assessment of the entire period of the Pre-poll election process leaves no doubt that the process had been highly unfair. The prospects for the fairness of remaining phases of the electoral process appear to be very slim. In fact, after such a thoroughly unfair pre-poll process, the need for any manipulation in the polling-day process and post-election process should be drastically reduced,” the CGEP pre-poll fairness assessment report concludes. However, the report warns that in case the popularity of the former ruling parties takes a hit in the remaining days, as apparently is the case due to the recent assassination of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, one of the worst wheat crisis in the country and the worst electricity outages on a daily basis, the compulsions for manipulation and rigging of the remaining phases of election will increase and one may witness desperate acts to get the desired election results.
