Victorious Imran sends peace overture to India
Says must resolve Kashmir via talks after win marred by charges of rigging
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-eInsaf (PTI) party chief Imran Khan, who looks set to become the next prime minister, on Thursday pledged to match every step India takes towards Pakistan with two, in his first speech after declaring victory, “thanks to God,” in a divisive general election marking only the second civilian-to-civilian transfer of power in the country.
“We want to improve our relations with India, if their leadership also wants it. This blame game that whatever goes wrong in Pakistan is because of India and vice versa brings us back to square one,” 65-year-old cricketer-turned -politician Khan said late on Thursday afternoon after his party emerged as the single largest in the National Assembly according to local media.
“This is not how we will grow, and it is detrimental to the subcontinent,” said Khan, who complained that he had been treated by the Indian media like he was a Bollywood villain .
“If they take one step towards us, we will take two, but at least we need a start.” An official announcement of the seat tally by the election commission was still awaited, more than 24 hours after polling ended.
A tally by Dawn newspaper showed PTI leading in 120 seats, shy of the 137 (out of 272 contested seats) needed for a majority in the National Assembly.
However, only 49% of the vote had been counted at the time of going to press. Jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) trailed with 61 seats and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led in 40, with the others split among smaller parties.
Khan should have no problems finding coalition partners from smaller parties and independents, observers said.
The election was marred by allegations of vote rigging levelled by the PML-N and the PPP, which said their monitors in many voting centres were either kicked out during counting or had not received the official notifications of the precinct’s results, but instead got handwritten tallies that they could not verify.
“It is a sheer rigging. The way the people’s mandate has blatantly been insulted, it is intolerable,” PML-N leader Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif’s brother, told a news conference as the counting continued. Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam have been jailed on corruption charges. Although PTI workers and supporters started celebrations before the final results, no statement — or even a tweet — was issued by Khan until he made the public address.