The United States said Thursday that it expects the upcoming national elections in Pakistan to be conducted in a manner that is both free and fair and follows the country's laws.
The South Asian nation of about 241 million people is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections on February 8. But the democratic process has been marred by widespread allegations of pre-poll rigging.
"It's not for the United States to dictate to Pakistan the exact specifics of how it conducts its election," U.S. State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller told a news conference in Washington.
"But to make clear that we want to see those elections conducted in a free, fair and peaceful manner that includes freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, and ultimately a full, open, reliable, vibrant democratic process," Miller said.
He was responding to charges that the military-backed Pakistani caretaker government was cracking down on the political party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan and its members who are filing to run for office.
Khan wrote from prison Thursday in The Economist that his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, was being unfairly muzzled.
"My party's leaders, workers and social-media activists, along with supportive journalists, were abducted, incarcerated, tortured and pressured to leave PTI," he asserted. "Many of them remain locked up, with new charges being thrown at them every time the courts give them bail or set them free."
"In this scenario, even if elections were held, they would be a disaster and a farce, since PTI is being denied its basic right to campaign," Khan wrote.
The cricket hero-turned-prime minister was removed from office in April 2022 through an opposition-led vote of no confidence.
Khan repeated his allegations in his Thursday article that the Pakistani military and the U.S. orchestrated his ouster to punish him for pushing an independent foreign policy and refusing to provide military bases to American troops.
"I will just say, as we have said before, the former prime minister's accusations are baseless, and I think I'll leave it at that," Miller said when asked for his reaction to Khan's claims.
Independent election monitors and human rights groups have also increasingly questioned the integrity and credibility of next month's vote, citing the crackdown on PTI and growing media censorship.
"At this point, there is little evidence to show that the upcoming elections will be free, fair or credible," Munizae Jahangir, the co-chairperson of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told a news conference in Islamabad last week.
She denounced the crackdown against PTI, calling it a "systemic dismemberment" of the party.
"I think that there is no doubt in anybody's mind that the strings of this country are being pulled by the military," Jahangir said when asked whether the military was influencing the electoral process in the poll run-up.
The Pakistani army denies it interferes with the election process or political matters, but critics dismiss it as mere claims. Generals have ruled Pakistan for more than three decades after ousting elected governments in military coups.
