BY EVA CHENG
General Pervez Musharraf has claimed that 70% of those eligible to vote in Pakistan's April 30 referendum participated, and that 97% endorsed his bid to remain the country's president for a further five years.
However, a May 1 article in Pakistan's main English daily, Dawn, reported that credible estimates put the turnout throughout the country at less than 5% and as low as 2% in the southern province of Sindh.
Rather than urging voters to vote no, most opposition parties called voters to boycott the referendum.
According to the May 1 Dawn report, the turnout was very low
in almost all parts of the country... In Islamabad and Rawalpindi, a small
number of voters went to polling stations despite the best efforts of the
district governments. Even in the cantonment area of Rawalpindi where the
majority of population is composed of serving and retired armed forces
personnel, the polling stations presented a deserted look. 
There were reports of rigging as the [polling] officers were seen stamping the ballot papers and stuffing the ballot boxes... the pro-referendum political parties and business groups were seen transporting voters from one polling station to another to enable them to cast vote more than once. The voters were served with meals and juices.
An April 30 AFP-Reuters dispatch reported blatant irregularities across Pakistan, with ineligible voters allowed to vote, often more than once.
In one instance, an AFP-Reuters correspondent observed a woman polling officer at a government college in Rawalpindi stamping ballot papers with a yes vote. When challenged, she stated that as a government employee she had to deliver the results demanded by her superiors.
Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) general secretary Farooq Tariq, whose party has been at the forefront in condemning Musharraf since he seized power in a military coup in 1999, said in a May 2 statement: Almost all the national and international newspapers reported they have not seen any queues at the polling stations and that voters lacked enthusiasm. Dawn has even gone in details on how the people have boycotted the referendum in all cities. But government ministers still insisted they have obtained a historic mandate'.
LPP members had taken to the streets on April 26 to mobilise support for their party's boycott call, challenging a government ban on anti-referendum campaigning. The demonstration went ahead despite a police raid on Farooq Tariq's home just days before.
About 200 LPP members gathered outside the Lahore Press Club, where they were met by hundreds of police armed with batons and guns. Tariq told Green Left Weekly that he managed to make a brief speech before the police started a baton charge on the
More than 30 LPP members were arrested, including Tariq. Fifteen were jailed, including three women, in harsh conditions.
A rally by the multi-party Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy the next day condemned the police attack.
All of those detained on April 26 were freed two days later after a Lahore judge took the extraordinary step of granting them immediate release on bail, rather than holding them for the usual period of as long as a week.
From Green Left Weekly, May 8, 2002.
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