LAHORE, Pakistan: The results of Pakistan’s elections were delayed Friday a day after the vote that was marred by sporadic violence, a mobile phone service shutdown and the sidelining of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his party.
Early results indicated that Jailed former premier Imran Khan’s party-backed independent candidates seemed to have sprung a surprise as the results of the started trickling in on Friday following unusual delays, leading to allegations of rigging.
Votes are being counted in Pakistan after Thursday’s general election which was marred by allegations of rigging, sporadic violence and a countrywide mobile phone shutdown.
Local media reported victories by independents backed by his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party after the imprisoned Khan was disqualified from contesting the vote because of criminal convictions he contends were politically motivated.
PTI candidates ran as independents after the Supreme Court and Election Commission said they couldn’t use the party symbol — a cricket bat. In Pakistan, parties use symbols to help illiterate voters find them on the ballots. PTI couldn’t hold rallies or open campaign offices, and its online events were blocked, steps it contended were unfair.
The chief election commissioner had previously said the results would be communicated to the oversight body by the early hours of Friday and released to the public after that. But that hasn’t happened. The Interior Ministry attributed the delay to a “lack of connectivity” resulting from security precautions.
Many Pakistani news channels reported that PTI-backed independents were giving the other big parties, led by three-time former premier Nawaz Sharif and political dynasty scion Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, a run for their money by striding ahead in dozens of constituencies.
Senator Mushahid Hussain, a member of Sharif’s party, called the media tallies “probably the biggest election upset in Pakistan’s political history” in the last 50 years. Withheld results were a recipe for disaster, he said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
There are 266 seats up for grabs in the National Assembly, with a further 70 reserved for women and minorities. If no party wins an outright majority, the one with the biggest share of the seats can form a coalition government.
There were no results from the Election Commission about the National Assembly vote and no information about the count appeared on its website more than 15 hours after polls closed. A commission spokesman was not available for comment at midmorning Friday.
Sharif struck a confident and defiant note on polling day, brushing off suggestions his Pakistan Muslim League party might not win an outright majority in the parliament. But the mood outside his headquarters was different by nightfall, with sparse crowds and no festivities.
He returned to the country last October after four years of self-imposed exile abroad to avoid serving prison sentences. Within weeks of his return, his convictions were overturned, leaving him free to seek a fourth term in office.
The polling ended at 5 pm on Thursday but the first official result was announced 10 hours later at 3 am on Friday, irking many about the delay and giving fuel to the rumour mills to indulge speculation of foul play to manipulate the outcome.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) so far officially uploaded only four results of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) assembly, which all were won by the PTI-backed independents. The commission has not uploaded even a single result of the National Assembly (NA) or other provinces.
However, private media channels showed that PTI-backed candidates were in the lead.
According to the Express Tribune newspaper, PTI-Independents have won six NA seats, followed by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) with four and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) with three.
However, BBC Urdu in its results showed that PTI-Independent and PML-N won four seats each and PPP three.
Dawn newspaper put PML-N in the lead with four wins, followed by PTI-Ind with three and PPP 2 seats.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has acknowledged a “huge” voter turnout in favour of its arch-rival PTI, however, it remains hopeful that its supremo Nawaz Sharif will get a record fourth term as the country’s prime minister.
Sharif was the favourite to win the election as he was being backed by the powerful Army.
So far among the major winners, former prime minister and PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif has won the NA 123 seat from Lahore with 63,953 votes, according to initial results.
Similarly, Balochistan National Party leader Akhtar Mengal won the election for National Assembly constituency NA-261 Surab-cum-Kalat-cum-Mastung by securing 3,404 votes.
The partial results reported by various TV channels showed that PTI-backed candidates were ahead of other parties on several seats
The excruciating delay in announcing the results pushed parties to the edge, with allegations of fraud being hurled along with demands for early results.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Maryam Aurangzeb said that the results are changing as they come in, stressing that preliminary results cannot be relied upon to say who’s winning from a said constituency.
“We were in the lead [when] suddenly the results stopped coming in,” she said while calling on the ECP to announce the results as soon as possible.
She also claimed PML-N’s Senior Vice President Maryam Nawaz’s victory on the PP-159 seat for the Punjab assembly.
The ECP said in a statement that Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja “contacted the Chief Secretaries, DROs (district returning officer) and Provincial Election Commissioners and has issued strict instructions to ensure immediate declaration of results.”
“The heat of the electoral process has passed; it is time to allow the country to heal…The political leadership — Mian Nawaz Sharif, Asif Ali Zardari, Imran Khan, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and others — must rise above petty politics and work together to confront the immense challenges our country is facing; they need to recognise that history is not kind to selfish politicians,” he urged.
Earlier, the Returning Officers allegedly stopped issuing results to the media following an ‘apparent victory’ of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf in most seats in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) provinces.
The cellphone and internet services suspended before elections were gradually restored during the night.
In total 266 National Assembly seats were up for grabs in Thursday’s election out of 336, but polling was postponed on at least one seat after a candidate was killed in a gun attack in Bajaur.
Another 60 seats are reserved for women and 10 for minorities and are allotted to the winning parties based on proportional representation.
A party must win 133 seats out of 265 being contested to form the next government.
Another 593 seats of the four provincial assemblies, out of a total 749, were also open for contest but the ECP delayed polls on at least three seats, two in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and one in Punjab, after two candidates died and one was killed.
