Khan’s party asks COG to make its ‘bombshell’ report on last year’s election in Pak public

Jailed former prime minister Imran Khan's party has asked the Commonwealth Observer Group to make its report on last year's February 8 general elections public, saying it is nothing short of a "bombshell" for the incumbent Shehbaz Sharif government.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) questioned the Commonwealth Observer Group (COG) as to why it "buried its damning report" for the time being and who are the individuals or institutions responsible for not making it public.

The leaked content of the COG report has revealed "systemic rigging, institutional bias, and deliberate targeting of the PTI and its founder Imran Khan", the party claimed.

Despite independent candidates, the majority of them backed by Khan's party, winning the most number of seats in the National Assembly, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party stitched together an alliance to form the government.

The PTI said the leaked report of the international mission has validated the party's longstanding reservations about "widespread pre-and post-poll rigging".

The party claimed that ''despite the fact that early vote counts indicated a landslide victory for candidates aligned with the PTI, their polling leads rapidly reversed".

PTI senior leader and Khan's close aide Zulfi Bokhari said in a social media post that it is a matter of public record that widespread irregularities marred Pakistan's 2024 general elections.

The recently surfaced report of COG contains grave concerns which were unjustifiably withheld from the public domain, he said.

"We want to know under what authority was this report suppressed, and for what duration? Who are the individuals or institutions responsible for its suppression? What legal or procedural justification, if any, was provided for this act of concealment. Why did COG and EU Commission depart from their stated standards of transparency and impartiality in the case of Pakistan?" he asked.

Bokhari said he would consult legal counsel to initiate proceedings aimed at securing disclosure, both of the report itself and of the decision-making processes that led to its suppression.

In response to a recent news report about the COG's final report on Pakistan's 2024 general elections, a Commonwealth spokesperson said on Monday: "We are aware that a version of the Commonwealth Observer Group (COG) Report on the 2024 Pakistan general elections is being circulated online. As a matter of policy, the Commonwealth Secretariat will not comment on leaked documents." It further said: "The government and the Election Commission of Pakistan have already received the report. The full report, as we had communicated earlier, will be released later this month." "The Commonwealth Secretariat remains firmly committed to election observation conducted in line with our established guidelines, which ensure impartiality and transparency. Our work is carried out free from any interference," it added.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)