[Voterescue] Bhutto report: Musharraf planned to fix elections

[Vickie Karp]

Election-related news tied to the assassination of Bhutto - this just
came into my inbox. ~ Vickie
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/24001.html
Bhutto report: Musharraf planned to fix elections
By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Monday, December 31, 2007
NAUDERO, Pakistan — The day she was assassinated last Thursday, Benazir
Bhutto had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of
Pakistan's intelligence agencies in rigging the country's upcoming
elections, an aide said Monday.

Bhutto had been due to meet U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Rep.
Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to hand over a report charging that the military
Inter-Services Intelligence agency was planning to fix the polls in the
favor of President Pervez Musharraf.

Safraz Khan Lashari, a member of the Pakistan People's Party election
monitoring unit, said the report was "very sensitive" and that the party
wanted to initially share it with trusted American politicians rather
than the Bush administration, which is seen here as strongly backing
Musharraf.

"It was compiled from sources within the (intelligence) services who were
working directly with Benazir Bhutto," Lashari said, speaking Monday at
Bhutto's house in her ancestral village of Naudero, where her husband and
children continued to mourn her death.

The ISI had no official comment. However, an agency official, speaking
only on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on
the subject, dismissed the allegations as "a lot of talk but not much
substance."

Musharraf has been highly critical of those who allege that his regime is
involved in electoral manipulation. "Now when they lose, they'll have a
good rationale: that it is all rigged, it is all fraud," he said in
November. "In Pakistan, the loser always cries."

According to Lashari, the document includes information on a "safe house"
allegedly being run by the ISI in a central neighborhood of Islamabad,
the alleged headquarters of the rigging operation.

It names as the head of the unit a brigadier general recently retired
from the ISI, who was secretly assigned to run the rigging operation,
Lashari said. It charges that he was working in tandem with the head of a
civilian intelligence agency. Before her return to Pakistan, Bhutto, in a
letter to Musharraf, had named the intelligence official as one of the
men she accused of plotting to kill her.

Lashari said the report claimed that U.S. aid money was being used to fix
the elections. Ballots stamped in favor of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q,
which supports Musharraf, were to be produced by the intelligence
agencies in about 100 parliamentary constituencies.
"They diverted money from aid activities. We had evidence of where they
were spending the money," Lashari said.

Lashari, who formerly taught environmental economics at Britain's
Cranfield University, said the effort was directed at constituencies
where the result was likely to be decided by a small margin, so it
wouldn't be obvious.

Bhutto was due to meet Specter and Kennedy after dinner last Thursday.
She was shot as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi early that
evening. Pakistan's government claims instead that she was thrown against
the lever of her car's sunroof, fracturing her skull.

(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
McClatchy Newspapers 2007
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