Pakistan faces a period of uncertainty as election results do not show a clear majority and two opposition political leaders, Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League (PMLN) and Imran Khan of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), They declare victory.
Full results of Thursday's election were not yet known for nine of the 265 seats contested Saturday night.
Independent candidates, mostly linked to jailed leader Khan's PTI, are far ahead with 102 seats, according to the latest count published on the electoral commission's website. Meanwhile, Sharif's PMLN is in second position with 73 seats, followed by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) with 54.
“This is probably the most controversial election in Pakistan's history,” said Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad.
He said PTI president Gohar Ali Khan is confident that his party will be in the national parliament as well as in Punjab province, where they claim to have a majority. They have also swept the polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Meanwhile, PMLN's Sharif, who also claims to have won the election, said he would seek to form a coalition government. And Zardari, of the PPP, stressed that there can be no formation of a federal government, as in the provinces of Punjab and Balochistan, without his PPP party.
According to Al Jazeera's Abid Hussain, two days after polls closed, a divided mandate has emerged between the three major political powers and there is little clarity about what comes next.
“With such division, the big question now is who will be able to form a government in Pakistan, a country of 241 million people that has suffered two turbulent years of political instability, an economy on the brink of default and growing internal problems. security challenges,” Hussain said.
Pakistani analyst Zaigham Khan said there are two possible scenarios after the announcement of the preliminary results.
“The most likely scenario is a coalition government that includes all political parties except the PTI,” Khan told Al Jazeera. This will include the two largest political parties, PPP and PMLN, as well as the MQM, Jamaat-e-Islami and others.
“The second scenario, less likely but technically possible, is that the PPP joins the PTI and forms a government,” the analyst said. PTI-affiliated candidates running as independents won the highest number of seats.
protests
While the nation was still awaiting final results, protests broke out across the country for the second day in a row, with demonstrators claiming that the delay in election results is allowing authorities to manipulate the vote count.
NetBlocks reported a nationwide outage of social media platform The PTI called the disruption “absolutely disgraceful”.
Election watchdog Free and Fair Election Network said it gave the Election Commission of Pakistan a generally positive assessment of how it conducted the polls, and said delays in announcing results “overshadowed an otherwise would be orderly,” raising questions about the legitimacy of the result.
“Furthermore, the suspension of mobile phone and Internet services by the interim government on election day – regardless of security reasons – undermined years of parliamentary efforts to reform the election results management process,” he added in its preliminary report.
Meanwhile, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union have expressed concern about Pakistan's electoral process, citing allegations of interference – including arrests of party workers – and adding that allegations of irregularities, interference and fraud should be investigated promptly. background.
In a statement on Saturday, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said comments by “certain countries and organizations” ignored the “undeniable fact” that Pakistan held elections peacefully and successfully while facing security threats.
'Stable hands'
Amid frustration and uncertainty among Pakistan's people, the head of the country's powerful military made his first public statement since the vote.
“The nation needs steady hands and a healing touch to overcome the politics of anarchy and polarization, which does not suit a progressive country of 250 million people,” Gen. Syed Asim Munir said, according to an army statement on Saturday.
“Elections are not a zero-sum competition where you win and lose, but rather an exercise to determine the mandate of the people,” Munir was quoted as saying in the statement.
“Political leadership and its workers must go beyond self-interest and join forces to govern and serve the people, which is perhaps the only way to make democracy functional and meaningful.”
The military is a dominant player in the country's political affairs and directly governed it for more than three decades since 1947.
Ayesha Siddiqa, a senior researcher at King's College London, said Pakistan's military has been waiting for a weak coalition to form under the leadership of the PMLN.
“In a way, these are the results we got,” Siddiqa told Al Jazeera. “But I would also say that these are not the results they expected. “They did everything they could to ensure voter turnout was low, but people came out with passion.”
Siddiqa said the army is likely to back a coalition government bringing together the PMLN and the PPP, but he is not yet sure who will lead it – Bhutto Zardari, Shehbaz Sharif or Nawaz Sharif.
