Former cricketer’s party takes a strong lead in Pakistan vote
● Star turned politician leads ● Election ‘the dirtiest’ says activist
Pakistan’s former cricket star Imran Khan and his party were maintaining a commanding lead yesterday amid slow and tedious counting of votes from a historic election the previous day that was marred by allegations of fraud and militant violence.
Election officials said an official count confirming Pakistan’s next government was expected late last night.
However, more than a dozen TV channels in Pakistan, based on official but partial counts, are projecting that Khan is getting as many as 119 seats of the 270 parliament seats that were contested.
The remainder in the 342seat Lower House of Parliament includes reserved seats for women and minorities. Voting for two seats was post toward poned after one candidate died during the campaign and another was disqualified.
It still wasn’t clear whether Khan’s Tehreek-e-insaf (PTI) would get a simple majority or have to form a coalition.
But before even half the votes were counted, Khan’s leading rival Shahbaz Sharif, who heads the Pakistan Muslim League – the party of jailed exprime minister Nawaz Sharif – rejected the vote, generating fears that disgruntled losers could delay the formation of the next government. Television projections give his party 61 seats.
In a tweet on his official page, Sharif said “our democratic process has been pushed back by decades”, adding that “had the public mandate been delivered in a fair manner, we would have accepted it happily”.
Complaints have also emerged from the independent Human Rights Commission, which issued a statement saying that in some places women were not allowed to vote.
In other areas, it said, “polling staff appeared to be biased a certain party”, without naming the party. In the days before Wednesday’s election, leading rights activist IA Rehman called the campaign “the dirtiest” in his country’s troubled journey toward sustained democracy.
Analysts have expressed concern that disgruntled losers could create instability for the incoming new government, which will face mounting challenges – including a crumbling economy, crippling debt and raging militancy.
As voting got under way on Wednesday in the southwestern city of Quetta, the Baluchistan provincial capital, militants sent a suicide bomber to a crowding polling station to carry out a deadly attack that killed 31 people.
The election, in which Pakistanis voted for the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, and the four provincial assemblies, marked only the second time in Pakistan’s 71-year history that one civilian government has handed power to another in the country of 200 million people.
Yet there have been widespread concerns during the election campaign about manipulation by the military, which has directly or indirectly ruled Pakistan for most of its existence. The military had deployed 350,000 troops at the 85,000 polling stations.
In a tweet on his official account, Pakistan’s military spokesman General Asif Ghafoor called accusations of interference “malicious propaganda.” The tweet featured a collage of pictures of Pakistanis handing military personnel at polling stations flowers and elderly women kissing soldiers.
Baluchistan also saw the worst violence during campaigning earlier this month, when a suicide bomber struck at a political rally, killing 149 people, including the candidate Siraj Raisani. Another 400 were wounded. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for that attack.
Baluchistan has been roiled by relentless attacks, both by the province’s secessionists and Sunni militants who have killed hundreds of Shiites there.