Pakistan’s Sham Elections in Occupied Balochistan

By Archen Baloch

Pakistan conducted its general elections on February 8, 2024. It also conducted its elections in occupied Balochistan at gunpoint where only the PPP and Muslim League (N) who were recently favored by the army to make their presence for certain reasons, one of them being the stark question of how to hide Pakistan’s utter failure in containing the 24 years old Balochistan’s insurgency for liberation.

The recent induction of PPP and Muslim League (N) in Balochistan’s politics is widely seen as an attempt of the Pakistan army to hoodwink the international community into believing that Baloch are represented in Pakistan’s mainstream polity and they believe in Pakistan. Their objective is to make sure that Balochistan’s political contour merges into Pakistan’s mainstream politics whereby the nationalistic outlook of Baloch politics is erased.

However, the picture in Balochistan differs from that of expectations of the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan army in Rawalpindi. Independent sources say that the turnout in occupied Balochistan was hardly 3 percent. The NA 261 Kalat is a case in point where the total number of voters in this constituency is 371430, out of which only 12,204 voters exercised their right to vote, thus the voter’s turnout was 3.97 percent. The average turnout stands at 2.48 of the total votes for so-called national and provincial elections across Balochistan.

Those political underdogs who failed to deliver on Pakistan’s army script have been discarded and replaced with military stooges and death squad members with no political background. The long-serving pseudo-Pashtun nationalist Mahmood Achakzai, now no more of any use to the Pakistan army after the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, divulged that a Pakistan army officer had taken money and sold his seat to another candidate.

Moulana Hedayatullah, the head of Haq Do Tehrik who won the Gwadar provincial seat with a low turnout margin revealed that the army had rigged the votes and favoured their people, he said that “thieves, under the supervision of the Pakistan army, cast thousands of fake votes at the polling stations where even the staff did not arrive, he further said that  “two Kech sub-districts, Mand and Dasht-Nagor, where no polling had ever taken place and people did not come for voting, yet an Afghan refugee was given the MNA seat with 40778 fake votes”.

The international community, especially the US, UK and the EU who each year give billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan have alleged interference, irregularities and fraud during and after the voting process and urged that these undemocratic practices should be fully investigated.

Pakistani military establishment overwhelmingly dominated by Punjab is hell-bent on stamping their will over the Baloch nation and its state manipulation has always been at work since early times when Balochistan was forcefully annexed – meddling from the pre-poll phase to election day irregularities to the post-poll counting process and cobbling together an alliance, at every stage, the will of Pakistan army is blatantly executed. Every attempt at a manipulative political manoeuvre in Balochistan is aimed at maintaining the monopoly of the Sunni Punjabi army over Balochistan. 

The fact is that the Baloch never joined Pakistan of their own free will, It was a forced annexation at gunpoint against the will of the Baloch people. A large number of pro-independent political parties and armed organizations are resisting and struggling to liberate Balochistan from the illegal occupation of Pakistan. According to Pakistani police reports 130 incidents of bomb blasts were carried out by the Baloch Liberation Army and other organizations.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) in statements said declared Pakistan’s elections in Balochistan a sham and illegal and vowed to resist them with their might available at their disposal.  The BLA’s spokesperson, Azad Baloch, also told the media that fighters of BLA carried out at least 43 attacks on Pakistan’s electoral process in Balochistan on 8 February 2024 making it clear to the Baloch nation and the world that the Baloch do not accept Pakistan illegal occupation and colonisation.