Khan declares victory
> But Sharif’s party rejects election results
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s cricket legend Imran Khan declared victory yesterday in a divisive general election and said he was ready to lead the nuclear-armed country after a long delay in ballot counting and allegations of vote rigging by most opponents.
“God has given me a chance to come to power to implement that ideology which I started 22 years ago,” Khan, 65, said in a televised speech from his house near here.
With nearly half the votes counted from Wednesday’s election, Khan’s Pakistan Tehreeki-Insaf (PTI), or Pakistan Movement for Justice, was in a commanding lead in the nucleararmed nation.
But supporters of jailed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said the counting process was an assault on democracy in a country that has a history of military rule.
Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) secretary Babar Yaqoob said early yesterday counting had been delayed by technical failures in an electronic reporting system and the tallying is now being conducted manually.
“There’s no conspiracy, nor any pressure in delay of the results. The delay is being caused because the result transmission system has collapsed,” Yaqoob said.
With 48% of the total vote counted, Khan’s PTI was listed by the ECP in its provisional results as leading in 113 of 272 contested National Assembly constituencies.
Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) was ahead in 64 constituencies, and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), led by the son of assassinated two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto, led in 42 constituencies.
Although Khan still appeared likely to fall short of the 137 seats needed for a majority in the National Assembly, he should not have problems finding coalition partners from smaller parties and independents.
But campaigning has been plagued for months by allegations the powerful armed forces have been trying to tilt the race in Khan’s favour after falling out with the outgoing ruling party of Sharif, who was jailed on corruption charges this month.
Early yesterday, Sharif’s brother Shehbaz, who now leads the PML-N, rejected the results after complaints that soldiers stationed in polling stations had thrown out poll monitors from political parties during the counting.
The PML-N and the PPP both said their monitors in many voting centres had not received the official notifications of the precinct’s results, but instead got hand-written tallies that they could not verify. – Reuters