The Electoral Commission of Pakistan (ECP) began to release the results of the general elections this Friday, after a wait of more than 12 hours since the centers closed, with data from a few constituencies although without a clear winner.
Results have only been announced for 16 of 265 National Assembly (NA) seats since voting ended on Thursday afternoon, marred by the suspension of mobile phone services, attacks by militants and accusations of handling.
Independent candidates, with six seats
According to this, the independent candidates supported by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) already have six seats, while the Muslim League (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) have secured five and four seats respectively. .
Uncertainty with the first counts
The PTI is the formation of the former cricket star and former prime minister Imran Khan, who was excluded from the electoral race cornered by more than a hundred court cases and three convictions handed down last week that keep him in prison.
The party not only faces these elections with its main leader and closest collaborators imprisoned, as the Supreme Court also stripped it of its symbols and identity just a month before the elections, forcing its candidates to compete as independent candidates.
With this in the background, a result in favor of the PTI is an unexpected scenario for these elections.
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Until yesterday, the most anticipated scenario for Pakistan was a victory for the Muslim League (PML-N) of three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Shafif, partly because of the advantage of having Khan in prison, but above all because of the tacit support of the powerful Pakistan Army, seen as the real power that controls the country.
The results released so far are not enough to project a probable victory; However, Khan’s PTI maintains that his victory was “overwhelming” and accused the ECP of delaying the announcements to moderate the results.
“Let the world know that the clear and overwhelming mandate of the people of Pakistan is being stolen,” the PTI said in a statement on X on Friday morning.
The Government blames the delays on telecommunications
The Pakistani Interior Ministry attributed the delay to telecommunications problems.
“Concerns related to the delay in processing the counting results have been addressed (…) This has been attributed to the lack of connectivity, which was a result of the precautions taken to ensure foolproof security,” he said in a published statement. on social network X.
This Thursday’s election day was celebrated with the blocking of mobile phones and internet limitations, ordered by the Government itself as a security measure to prevent violent attacks on the centers.
This reduced the flow of information and real-time reporting on what was happening at the voting centers, although authorities initially assured that this would not affect the voting process.
Pakistan is constitutionally a democratic parliamentary republic, so in these elections a party needs to win a majority of seats in order to form a government.
The Pakistani National Assembly has 266 seats, although only 265 representatives were elected yesterday, after the EPC decided to suspend the election of a constituency.
BY:TTU
