Pakistan’s powerful Army Chief has urged the country to leave “anarchy and polarisation” behind as two ex-Prime Ministers declared victory in an election that has defied expectations.
With most results in, independent candidates linked to jailed former PM Imran Khan have won most seats.
But Nawaz Sharif, another ex-PM widely seen as having the Army’s backing, has urged others to join him in coalition.
Officials have also rejected Western criticism of how the election was run.
With no clear outcome, General Asim Munir called on all parties to show maturity and unity, saying the politics of polarisation did “not suit a progressive country of 250 million people”. “Elections are not a zero-sum competition of winning and losing but an exercise to determine the mandate of the people,” Gen Munir said. Fourteen National Assembly seats are yet to be determined – all in the vast and sparsely-populated Balochistan province – but Khan and Sharif say they have won. Khan released an AI-generated video message rejecting his rival’s claim and calling on supporters to celebrate. He has been jailed on charges of leaking state secrets, corruption and an unlawful marriage and his PTI party was banned from taking part in the polls.
About 100 of the wining candidates are independents and all but eight of them are backed by the PTI, the non-profit Free and Fair Election Network said.
On Saturday PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan said the party would try to form a Government and would start protesting on Sunday if complete election results had not been released by then. Sharif’s PML-N party won 71 seats and he acknowledged that he did not have the numbers to form a Government alone, but insisted he could ease the country from difficult times as the head of a coalition. – BBC
