PTI leads in much-delayed Pakistan election results

More than 15 hours after polling ended on Wednesday, the country is still awaiting final results from the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). While massive delays and allegations of rigging cast a shadow over the vote counting process, preliminary results indicated that Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) had obtained a clear edge over other parties.

Although PTI workers and supporters started celebrations before the final results, no statement — or even a tweet — has been issued by Imran Khan on his victory. His spokesperson Naeemul Haque, however, tweeted that the PTI chief will “address the nation” today at 2pm “in celebration and recognition of the massive support received from the people of Pakistan in the 2018 elections which was a contest between the forces of good and evil”.

On Thursday morning, the first session of the Pakistan Stock Exchange following the elections saw tremendous activity, with the bourse's benchmark 100 index jumping more than 600 points within the first half an hour, Dawn reports.   

Based on reporting of 47 per cent of polling stations, PTI is leading on 114 National Assembly seats, while the PML-N trails behind with 64 and the PPP-Parliamentarians (PPP-P) is at third spot with 42 seats.

In Punjab, with preliminary results from 50pc polling stations available with ECP, PML-N is currently holding its lead on 129 provincial seats but PTI is closing in with a lead on 122 seats.

Meanwhile, PTI is clearly steering ahead in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with a lead on 64 seats against Muttahida Majlis–e–Amal (MMA), which is currently leading on 12 seats, as per reporting from 35pc polling stations in the province.

The preliminary results from 37pc polling stations in Sindh show PPP-P leading on 75 seats, followed by PTI on 22 seats.

In Balochistan, Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) is leading on 12 provincial seats, followed by Balochistan National Party (BNP) on 9 seats, based on unofficial results from 35pc polling stations.

According to Geo News, Awami National Party leader Ghulam Ahmed Bilour conceded defeat to PTI's Shaukat Ali, his competitor on Peshawar's NA-31 seat, saying: "The results indicate that Imran Khan is a favourite leader of the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. I am a democratic person and I admit the defeat."

Counting is still going on at the polling stations of different constituencies. 

According to AFP, Gallup Pakistan estimated voter turnout at between 50 to 55 per cent in an electorate of nearly 106 million — similar to the previous contest in 2013.

Delay in results

At a 4am press conference, the Election Commission of Pakistan said that "technical difficulties" were behind the unprecedented delay.

CEC Muhammad Raza Khan congratulated the people of Pakistan for participating in a "democratic polling process", and expressed gratitude for the polling staff across the country as well as the security personnel deployed on Wednesday.

“I am aware that the delay in announcement of results has caused some annoyance. But it [Results Transmission System (RTS)] was a new system and we were implementing it for the first time. Therefore, there was some delay,” said the CEC.

Regarding political parties' grievances about polling agents not being given Form 45 (the statement of vote count) by presiding officers, he said: "It is not possible that a polling agent was not given the form. If there are any genuine complaints, we will take strict action."

To a question of how he would respond to allegations of rigging in the election, the CEC confidently replied: "We will prove ourselves that we did our job right."

He announced what he called the "first non-official, preliminary result" of the elections: PTI's Chaudhry Adnan won PP-11 (Rawalpindi VI) with 43,089 votes.

Earlier, in the day ECP Secretary Babar Yaqoob rejected the notion that there was any 'conspiracy' behind the delay in transmission of elections results. "The only reason for delay was a technical fault in the Results Transmission System (RTS), which stopped working when thousands of polling officers began using it simultaneously," he clarified.

He made it clear that the election body had so far not released any official results. Yaqoob said that the complaints by political parties regarding katchi receipts were being addressed and action would be taken on all genuine complaints.

He added that the ECP is compiling results that have been received via scanned copies of Form 45 and it had set aside the RTS for the time being to expedite the collation of polling data.

Earlier, an ECP spokesperson had confirmed to DawnNewsTV that the delay was due to the breaking down of RTS, which is being run through a software powered by National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra).

According to data released by ECP, a total of 3,459 candidates — 1,623 from Punjab, 824 from Sindh, 725 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 287 from Balochistan — were cleared to run for the 272 general seats of the national assembly. However, elections in two constituencies — NA-60, NA-108 — were later postponed by the commission.  

A single party will need to bag at least 137 of the directly elected seats to be able to form the government on its own.