On Sunday, Pakistan’s national election vote count concluded. Interestingly, independent candidates, mostly backed by former prime minister Imran Khan, won 101 of the 264 seats, the election commission’s website showed. Khan is presently in jail.
Shockingly, the final count was released more than 60 hours after voting ended in Thursday’s national polls. This delay has raised questions about the entire election process.
Another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif’s party has won 75 seats, making it the largest single party in parliament.
Sharif has already made it clear that he is in talks with other groups to form a coalition government as his party had failed to win a clear majority on its own.
Earlier in the day, Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party threatened to hold nationwide peaceful protests if the vote count was not released overnight.
The interim government of Pakistan said the wait was caused by communication problems due to a mobile internet outage on election day.
The outage, which authorities said was for security reasons, drew apprehension from rights groups and foreign governments, including the United States of America.
On Sunday, in a post on social media platform X, a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party secretary called off general protests, but said there should be demonstrations at certain electoral offices where they were concerned about “forged” results.
About 93 of the independent candidates who succeeded in the polls were associated with Imran Khan’s PTI party.