Elections of apex body of architects in Pakistan are in question as contesting candidates have alleged the election process has been compromised through cyber-attack for favorable results a day ago.
Thousands of voters’ representatives have urged the convenor of the Pakistan Council of Architects and Town Planners (PCATP) to declare the election null and void amid announcing re-election in a transparent manner.
The PCATP established in 1983, is a federal regulatory authority for architects and town planners based in Pakistan. Filing a petition before the Convenor of Election Committee of the PCATP in Islamabad on Wednesday as many as eight contesting candidates raised objections in the election process.
The petitioners include Jehangir Khan Sherpao, Azhar Mamoon Sualehi, Ahmad Mukhtar, Husnain Raza Khan, Mansoor Ahmad, Farman Ullah, Fahad Nizamani and Mahjabeen Bugti.
They alleged that the elections have been stolen through hacking orchestrated by incumbent Chairperson M. Arif Changezi.
In their objection petition, the objectors have relied upon an official email which was sent by Oathsystems (Pvt.) Limited, the IT company entrusted with carrying out online elections, to the Registar, PCATP at 2:04pm on March 7, 2023.
In this panicked email, the IT company plainly admitted that some party orchestrated an hacking attack on the online voting system, and succeeded in manipulating the results. The IT company’s email states: “we witnessed an attack on our voting system at around 02:00am on 7th March, 2023. As a result of this attack, our voting result was manipulated…. During our rectification process, the voting system was unavailable to the members for around 3 hrs… Despite the fact that we carefully corrected every piece of data… we cannot certify the result.”
After receiving this email, two members of PCATP Election Committee expressly rejected the election results. A third member, Arch. Yusuf Awan, who was also the Committee’s Convenor, wrote that “report of Conusltant IT be attached and shared with contestants and uploaded on the website”.
Only 2 out of 5 members of the Election Committee approved the results. However, relying upon this minority opinion of the Election Committee, the incumbent Chairman Mr. Changezi proceeded to issue a notification declaring himself as the winner of the elections.
Talking to TLTP, the leading objector, Arch. Jehangir Khan Sherpao said: “If the IT company which conducted the elections is stating in black and white that “they cannot verify the results”, how can anyone trust these results?
Thousands of architects and town planners from all over the country voted for me and my panel; however, their votes have been brazenly stolen – through hacking (cybercrime), whose beneficiary sadly appears to be the incumbent Chairman and his team.
It is most shameful for this to happen in the elections conducted in a noble profession such as ours, and that too for a service position, not a political one. As many as 10,000 registered architects and town planners in Pakistan who all are entitled to vote for elections under the PCATP Ordinance 1983 as the elections are supposed to be conducted after every two years. The last two PCATP elections were conducted successfully through an online system by the same IT company. This year, the elections were again held through online voting from 10am on the 4th March to 10am on the 7th of March. However, on the last night of voting, the voting system got hacked and manipulated. As a result, credibility of the elections has become hotly disputed. The petitioners requested the Convenor PCATP to declare the elections null and void and announce re-elections.
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