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ISLAMABAD/LAHORE, PAKISTAN —Preliminary official results of Pakistan's parliamentary polls trickled in Friday after an unusually long delay and allegations the results are being manipulated to favor military-backed parties.
The vote took place Thursday amid a nationwide suspension of mobile phone and internet services and sporadic violence, fueling doubts about the credibility of an already controversial election.
By late afternoon Friday, the Election Commission of Pakistan had released slightly more than half the results for the 266 National Assembly seats. These results showed that a group of independent candidates, supported by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, performed better than expected despite being targeted by a state crackdown before the election.
The PTI-affilated candidates had secured 61 seats, while candidates of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, or PML-N, led by three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, had won 43. Sharif is viewed as the powerful military's favorite.
The Pakistan Peoples Party, headed by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, trailed with 38 seats, with smaller regional parties splitting the rest.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Gohar Khan, acting PTI chairman, claimed his party was leading in more than 150 seats but that "attempts are being made to change the results."
PML-N spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb claimed her party was in a "strong" position and would be able to form a government in Islamabad.
Based on local constituency counts, unofficial overnight tallies from Pakistani media outlets showed PTI-backed candidates leading races nationwide. In some cases, they were ahead by 30,000 to 50,000 votes. However, according to early official results released on Friday, they were either lagging behind or lost the race by a small margin.
"Unfortunately, the integrity of the ballot has been trampled," said Asma Shirazi, a prominent prime-time political talk show host, during a live broadcast on her Urdu-language Hum news channel. "The way candidates, with some winning by huge margins overnight, have been declared losers has made this election even more contentious," Shirazi said.
The change in results was blamed on the delay in announcing what PTI alleged were manipulated results.
"The die is cast. If the final results show anything other than a PTI victory, PTI will reject it as a rigged result, and understandably so: Its early gains led to a long delay in announcing final results. The military, intent on denying power to PTI, intervened in the process," said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at Wilson Center in Washington.
Meanwhile, clashes between police and angry PTI supporters protesting against alleged rigging in the northwestern town of Shangla reportedly killed a protester and injured several others.
The election commission blamed the delay in processing the results on an "internet issue," while the Interior Ministry defended the election day suspension of mobile phone and internet services as "a result of preventive measures taken to ensure foolproof security" of the vote.
The services were reinstated Friday morning. The ministry cited deadly bombings in parts of Pakistan on and in the run-up to the polls for suspending the nationwide communication networks.
"We knew there would be noise from every side over the decision, but I would take this decision again if I had to," Interior Minister Gohar Ejaz told a news conference in the Pakistani capital.
The suspension of phone and internet services sparked widespread allegations of an attempt by Pakistan's military-backed interim government to rig the polls, mainly to prevent candidates loyal to Khan's party from gaining an upper hand.
"We are also concerned about the steps that were taken to restrict freedom of expression, specifically around internet and cell phone use," Vedant Patel, the U.S. State Department principal deputy spokesperson, told reporters in Washington on Thursday.
Pakistan has nearly 190 million cellular subscribers, including 128 million using mobile broadband services. The suspension of service prevented many voters from accessing the election commission's data system to retrieve polling station locations and other details.
Journalists with mainstream Pakistani television channels said they could not promptly report rigging incidents and other irregularities from the field throughout the day because of the suspension.
Analysts say whoever wins the election will serve a public that is deeply disappointed in the political system, has little faith in the electoral process, and is extremely worried about the nation's economic survival.
The crackdown on the PTI left many unhappy with this democratic exercise.
"I came out thinking that maybe my vote will improve something for this country and for us," said Faiza Tariq, a first-time female voter in the eastern city of Lahore.
Fazal-Ur-Rehman was among those who did not vote, citing a lack of trust in the process.
"It doesn't matter if I vote or not. Those who are supposed to come in power will come in power," he said.
Other voters, like Anam Khan, criticized the disruption of communication services.
"Why? Is there a war going on here? Do they want to keep people from posting videos on social media? People can do that later, God willing," she said.
The Pakistani government deployed more than 650,000 army, paramilitary and police personnel to provide security for tens of thousands of polling stations across the world's fifth most populous country, with an estimated population of 241 million.
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Khan a central figure
An opposition parliamentary vote of no-confidence removed Khan from office in April 2022, a move he rejected as illegal and orchestrated by the military. He accused the United States of playing a role in the toppling of his government for his neutrality over the Ukraine war, charges that Washington and Islamabad rejected.
Khan, the 71-year-old politician, has been convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for highly disputed corruption and other charges in the lead-up to the vote.
The cricket hero-turned-political leader's PTI has been subjected to a monthslong nationwide clampdown, in which hundreds of workers and candidates were arrested without charges and released only after quitting the party or withdrawing from the election.
Since his removal from power, Khan has been shot and wounded at an anti-government PTI rally, and mainstream media has been banned from airing his name or images. The election commission also banned the party from using its iconic cricket bat electoral symbol on highly disputed technical grounds, preventing PTI from contesting the polls as a unified force.
However, public polls before the vote constantly rated Khan as the most popular national politician and PTI as the largest political party in Pakistan.
PTI Senator Walid Iqbal told VOA that the restrictions on election day and subsequent alleged manipulation of results were part of the "witch-hunt" his party faced.
"I think it was a big success that, despite all these challenges, our PTI-backed independent candidates have been leading," Waleed said. "And now we see that overnight, the results system breaks down, and the result announcements stop. So, this is just a continuation," the senator added.
"Despite being in jail, Khan remains a central figure in the election," Kugelman told VOA.
"But it appears the state is creating an enabling environment for rigging with its suspension of mobile services. This threatens to deny many Pakistanis the right to vote for who they choose, casting doubt on the government's insistence that this election will be free and fair," Kugelman said.
More than 5,000 candidates were running for 266 general seats in the 342-member National Assembly. About 12,600 candidates were running for assembly seats in Pakistan's four provinces.
The number of registered voters is more than 128 million, but the election commission has yet to determine how many actually turned out for Thursday's polling.
The U.S.-based Gallup polling company found in a survey on the eve of the elections that more than two-thirds of Pakistanis "lack confidence in the honesty of their elections."
Rigging allegations have historically shadowed all elections in Pakistan, and the military has been blamed for taking steps to ensure its allies emerge as the winner.
"It's very difficult [to prove rigging] because you can't get concrete evidence that you can use to establish it in court. This is always an issue in rigging cases," said political analyst Hasan Askari.
"Sometimes, rigging is a perception; other times, even when it's a reality, you can't find concrete evidence for many things. For example, what evidence do you have that a ballot box was changed?"