ISLAMABAD, Feb 13 (NNI): Questioning the fairness of the general elections held on February 8, former foreign minister and PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Tuesday that even those who had won their seats were not convinced that the polls were free and fair.
Talking to the media in Islamabad, he appealed to the chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) to take notice of the complaints of rigging.
“Even the international media is calling these elections rigged,” he said, and called upon all political parties which alleged that they had been deprived of the people’s mandate to get united. “Initially my daughter was leading by 14, 000 votes. But suddenly updates on the election results disappeared from TV screens. And later it was announced that she had lost,” he said.
Qureshi congratulated the PTI’s youth on the party’s remarkable victory in the polls. “But how unfortunate it is that the opposition parties are not ready to admit that the PTI has won,” the PTI vice chairman said, adding, “I request them to now start calling spade a spade.”
He further said it was a matter of shame for the parties, which had been carved out of the PTI, that they suffered a humiliating defeat in the elections.
Qureshi said he did not meet with the former prime minister and ex-PTI chairman Imran Khan after the elections. “Both of us have been kept in solitary confinement,” he added. He expressed the surprise that how PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto would not enter into an alliance with the PML-N after heaping so much scorn on the party in the last few months.
These elections, he went on to say, would not bring stability to the country. “Even if a government is formed, it will not exist for long because it will not be enjoying people’s support,” he opined.
The PTI vice chairman said that now on the order of the Lahore High Court (LHC), his daughter was going to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to seek justice. NNI
