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KARACHI - Benazir Bhutto was poised to offer proof that Pakistan's election commission and shadowy spy agency were seeking to rig an upcoming general election the night she was assassinated, a top aide said.
Senator Latif Khosa, who authored a 160-page dossier with Bhutto documenting rigging tactics, said they ranged from intimidation to fake ballots, and were in some cases unwittingly funded by US aid.
Bhutto had been due to give the report to two visiting US legislators over dinner on the day she was killed in a suicide bombing.
"The state agencies are manipulating the whole process," said Khosa, head of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party election monitoring unit.
"There is rigging by the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), the election commission and the previous government ... They were on the rampage."
President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman Rashid Qureshi dismissed the claim as ridiculous.
"It makes one laugh," he said. "The President has said a free, fair, transparent and peaceful election is essential, which forms part of his overall strategy for transforming Pakistan into a fully democratic [nation].
"Take it from me, it's going to be perhaps the best election that Pakistan has ever had."
Khosa said the report, entitled "Yet another stain on the face of democracy", detailed how the spy agency was planning to issue 25,000 pre-stamped ballots for each of 108 candidates for national assembly seats in Punjab from the party that backs President Musharraf.
He said the ISI also had a "mega computer" which could hack into any computer and was connected to the Election Commission's system.
An initial draft list of voters published in June put the electorate at 52 million people, more than 20 million short, triggering a backlash from Musharraf's political opponents.
The Supreme Court ordered the commission to revise the list, and in October it raised the total to 80 million.
"Benazir was supposed to hold a press conference. It was going to be distributed to everyone, but unfortunately that did not arise because she was assassinated," Khosa said.
- Reuters
