International Politics Pakistan

Rigging the Pakistani Vote

Senator Joe Biden, who along with John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, flew in to observe the parliamentary elections vote today in Pakistan, told reporters in Washington on Friday that if the elections can be shown to be “patently rigged,” he will propose that the United States cut off military aid to Pakistan.

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Well, Joe, I think your cards are about to be called. All day there have been instances
of widespread vote rigging, fraud and bribery, being reported on some of Pakistan’s most prominent blogs, like here at Teeth Maestro and here at Metroblogging Karachi.

I’ll have a brand new report on all this early tomorrow morning from a first-hand source, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, it looks like the opposition parties (Benazir Bhutto’s PPP and Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N), not that of Musharraf’s (PML-Q and his reactionary allies, MQM), are winning. So one of the questions hanging in the air is this one: Who is doing the rigging?

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