Ex-cricket star wins in Pakistan but needs coalition

Imran Khan’s party will need to find allies in tough political landscape Opponents and critics claim Imran Khan’s party won through fraud and manipulation.

ISLAMABAD— With Pakistani election officials declaring the party of Imran Khan to be the winner of parliamentary balloting, the former cricket star turned to forming a coalition government Friday, since the party did not get an outright majority.

That will mean finding allies and cutting deals in Pakistan’s rough-and-tumble political landscape — a task made even more difficult by Khan’s first address to the nation on Thursday, in which he took an uncompromising stand against a culture of corruption and big money.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-eInsaf party, or PTI, won 116 of 269 contested seats in the National Assembly, while his nearest rival, Shahbaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League, won 64 seats, the Election Commission said after two days of tedious vote-counting from Wednesday’s balloting.

Sharif, the younger brother of jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, had earlier rejected the results, charging widespread fraud and manipulation. He met with representatives of other losing parties to decide on a protest strategy.

Khan’s opponents and human rights groups say he won because of widespread fraud and massive manipulation. They allege involvement of Pakistan’s powerful military and its intelligence agency known by the acronym ISI. Khan has dismissed the allegations, calling the election the most transparent in the country’s 71-year history, which has been dominated by military interference, either directly or indirectly. AEuropean Union team monitored the balloting and its leader Michael Gahler said, “Overall, the election results are credible.”

But the monitors criticized the campaign, saying it was marred by intimidation of some candidates, an effort to undermine the former ruling party and media self-censorship.

“Our overall assessment of the election process is that it is not as good as in 2013,” Gahler said.

Third place in the National Assembly went to the left-ofcentre Pakistan Peoples Party with 39 seats. Smaller parties and independent candidates won the rest of the seats. The Election Commission said vote counting was also still underway in 12 remote areas, offering Khan a possibility of more seats but still not an outright majority.

There will likely be days of negotiation before the makeup of Pakistan’s National Assembly and four provincial parliaments are clear and Khan can begin implementing his agenda.