Islamabad February 17, 2007: Former Prime Minister and Chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto hailed the report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan which, following the bye election in Karachi, concluded, " unless the Election Commission and the various branches of administration involved in the election process improve their performance... it will be impossible for anyone to believe in their capacity to hold the next general election in a free and fair manner".

In its report released on February 12, 2007, the HRCP found:

*-The start of polling was delayed by as much as 90 – 150 minutes at several polling stations".

*-The turnout was pretty low and it was difficult to believe that the final vote count in a by-election came close to the total votes cast in the general election in 2002.

*-Security arrangements at polling stations were quite unsatisfactory. All kinds of people including armed activists were allowed freedom of polling stations”.

*-The polling staff at almost all booths was afraid of checking young activists. ‘Nobody is going to risk his life for a few hundred rupees (the fee offered for polling duty)’, said a presiding officer.

*-The pattern of interference with orderly polls that Karachi has known for some years was fully evident on Saturday.  At one place a group of people that were stamping ballot papers melted away when they saw HRCP observers but left a pad of counterfoils of these papers to be collected by the latter. These counterfoils bear voters’ particulars in such orderly sequence as can never be maintained in any election because people generally do not line up before the polling staff in the sequence in which their names are entered on the voters’ list.

*-HRCP observers received several complaints from the election office of the PPP candidate that their polling agents were being harassed and forced out of polling stations. The incidence of manhandling of Mr. Nafees Siddiqui and the damage to his car was also reported. In one incident MQM supporters were reported to have alleged that that they had been attacked by an armed supporter of the rival candidate.

In a statement today Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto said that the country was facing a dangerous crisis with a military operation in its largest province of Balauchistan, rise of Taliban in the tribal areas, large scale disappearances, and state sponsored attacks on political opponents while poverty, unemployment, inflation, rising corruption and frustration amongst the young grew.

She said that the country needed to go back to its democratic roots as envisaged by Quaid e Azam for which Quaid e Awam sacrificed his life. Mohtarma said that democracy and development went hand in hand.

She asked the people to unite on the banner of the restoration of democracy for which fair, free and impartial elections under a neutral government of national consensus was essential.

Mohtarma Bhutto said that it was significant that the HRCP had noted that, "activities and statements by the provincial and federal authorities, including the head of the state himself... fall in the category of pre-poll interference.  Further, the presence of local government officials including elected leaders inside some booths vitiated the poll process."

Moreover the widely respected civil group further stated that, "HRCP cannot but express its apprehension that if the pattern of events witnessed in this by-election gets repeated in the coming general election, the country’s transition to democratic dispensation cannot be safely assumed".