Telephone services have been suspended in Pakistan after a general election marred by allegations of voter fraud and militant attacks.
The interim government said it had suspended phone services, including mobile internet, on Thursday for security reasons following two Islamic State bombings that targeted election offices in rebel areas of Balochistan province on the eve of voting. Announced.
But political parties and candidates have expressed concern that the suspension is a strategy that could allow Pakistan’s powerful military, which has a history of meddling in opinion polls, to rig the election.
Results were expected to be known by the evening, but the suspension caused delays in reporting voting results and raised concerns about the integrity of the process.
Amnesty International condemned the suspension as a “reckless attack on people’s rights”, while Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, who was running as an independent candidate in Islamabad, told This is the beginning of election day fraud.”
“The pre-poll environment was already one of the worst in Pakistan’s history. Separating candidates from their agents and staff on election day is unacceptable,” Khokhar said.
Early indicators, with around 20% of votes counted (mainly from urban areas), show Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party of now-imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan, taking an unexpected lead. It was showing.
PTI spokesperson Syed Zulfikar Bukhari said the party had an early lead in 114 out of 270 constituencies, giving it a large majority over other parties. However, he raised concerns about irregularities, claiming that vote counting in some areas was “delayed or stopped altogether in an effort to change the outcome.”
Other candidates told the Guardian that poll workers had stopped collecting votes at polling stations.
Many analysts believe that this election will see the return of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, which is said to have struck deals with the military, which is widely seen as a power broker. was seen as a foregone conclusion. And he had tacit support for Pakistan’s return to power.
Sources told the Guardian that Mr Sharif had already written a victory speech and was scheduled to give it at party headquarters in Lahore at 7pm, but it was canceled as the first results began to arrive.
The military has also done everything it can to keep Khan and his PTI party out of politics after he was ousted from power in 2022 following a dramatic clash with military leaders. , which many saw as an obvious attempt to prevent Mr. Khan from returning to power.
Khan has been in prison since August and has been unable to run for election. Last week, he was sentenced to three separate sentences of more than 10 years in prison in cases he claims were politically motivated.
His PTI party suffered a prolonged crackdown in the run-up to the vote, preventing candidates from freely participating in the election. PTI leaders had claimed that the suspension of mobile services was aimed at halting the high voter turnout that was widely seen to benefit the PTI.
Given the strength of the military’s campaign against Khan, few expected Thursday’s election would result in his party returning to power.
Nevertheless, the mood at polling stations across Islamabad was overwhelmingly in favor of the PTI and Mr. Khan, despite his imprisonment.
Feroza Rashid Qureshi, 73, said he could barely walk but had his children carry him to the polling station to vote for PTI. “We are tired of Mr. Sharif and Mr. Bhutto,” she said. She said: “What happened to Imran Khan was very wrong. The army is behind the fake case against him and the suppression of his party.”
More than 128 million people have registered to vote, including 20 million people voting for the first time, and while many have expressed doubts about whether the election will be free or fair, Khan is widely seemed to support him.
“My entire generation supports Imran Khan and supports him,” said Alisha Khan, 19. “Maybe the outcome is already decided, but we still have to be optimistic that our votes will matter and things will change.”
The internal security situation remained unstable during the election. On election day, more than 650,000 security personnel were deployed across Pakistan, especially in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, which have been hardest hit by the increase in militant attacks.
Five policemen were killed in an explosion in the Krachi area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province’s Dera Ismail Khan district on Thursday, and one person was killed when gunmen opened fire on a security forces vehicle in a tank about 40 kilometers north. Died.
In Balochistan province, more than a dozen explosions from grenades and improvised explosive devices killed one civilian soldier and injured 10 others, and an explosion outside a women’s polling center killed two children, officials said. did.
