In Pakistan, a delay in poll results could undercut election integrity

When Pakistan’s election results started trickling in after the close of polls on Thursday, it quickly became clear that something remarkable had happened.

Candidates affiliated with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), which is being led from prison by ex-premier Imran Khan, had taken the lead in more than a hundred constituencies across the country and seemed destined to emerge as the winners of the election. Considering the level of persecution being faced by the party – its top leadership was thrown in jail or forced to defect after the May 9 riots – this development left most of the commentariat stunned.

Then, mysteriously, the results stopped. Returning officers, who are bound by law to compile and deliver the numbers from their constituencies to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) by 2 a.m. on the day following the election, failed to do so – sparking fears that the results were being altered. When the results began to come in again in the early hours of Friday morning, several constituencies where PTI-backed candidates had been shown in commanding positions flipped.

“For the last six months, we’ve had a slogan saying, ‘answer their cruelty with your vote’ and I think people have really abided by that,” says Sayed Zulfiqar Bukhari, who served in Mr. Khan’s cabinet as a special assistant. “Now we’re seeing the people’s mandate being stolen in broad daylight.”

Later on Friday, the Interior Ministry released a statement attributing the delay in processing results to its suspension of cellular services during the election, a blackout it had enacted citing security concerns. Meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif, a three time former prime minister and Mr. Khan’s closest rival, claimed in a victory speech that his party had emerged as the largest in the country – though it still trailed behind independents, a pool which is overwhelmingly made up of PTI-backed candidates

According to the latest projections, even if PTI-affiliated candidates make up the single largest voting bloc in the national assembly, it is inconceivable that a single party will have the seats to govern alone, and the results are likely to be contested in several rounds of litigation. Political commentator Mosharraf Zaidi expects the cases and tribunals to last for months.

“The most important implication of the ECP’s indefensible delay in reporting election day results is that every party and candidate that has not been declared victorious now has legitimate grounds to contest the outcomes,” he says. “This is complicated much further by clear evidence – comically transparent – of the manipulation of several results.”

What confuses the issue even more is that there are 70 seats in parliament that are not directly elected. These seats, reserved for women and religious minorities, are allocated to each party according to their share of directly elected members. In the run-up to the Feb. 8 poll, the PTI was deprived of its election symbol – the cricket bat – which meant that every PTI candidate was effectively running as an independent. Because the PTI does not technically exist as a party in the parliament, it will not be able to buttress its numbers with its share of reserved seats. 

The loss of the symbol, which also helps illiterate voters identify their party’s candidates, is one of several disadvantages the PTI was dealing with in the run up to Thursday’s election.

Last week, apparently on the directions of the country’s powerful military establishment, Mr. Khan was sentenced in three separate court cases, including a seven-year conviction for contracting an illegal marriage. Mr. Khan’s convictions, added to the fact that most of his party’s top leadership had been forced underground, led many in the country to believe that PTI supporters would be too demoralized to turn out. 

But “the jailed former Prime Minister inspired the voters of Pakistan to resist all pressures,” says political analyst Nasim Zehra, adding that “voters have upset the games and the calculations of Pakistan’s political managers.”

These managers, a reference to the top brass of the Pakistan army, have been accused of manipulating past elections to install governments of their choosing, including the one led by Mr. Khan from August 2018 to April 2022. That government and the one that followed it were both unstable coalitions dependent on the military’s support to govern, and there are many who expect the trend to continue in the future.

“The incoming govt is dead on arrival,” says veteran commentator Cyril Almeida, via WhatsApp, “a hodgepodge of anti-Imran forces that have linked their immediate fate to military patronage. ... It will stumble on, but will, with certainty, fail.”

With Pakistan’s economy on the brink of collapse and a recent uptick in terror incidents, it was hoped that the elections would produce the sort of stable government that could tackle Pakistan’s myriad problems. But Mr. Zaidi says “the cloud of controversy” over the results will rob “any government that takes oath ... of the legitimacy it needs to enact quick and difficult decisions.”

This may well enable the military to consolidate its grip on power. “The economic policy and other major issues are being handled by the military directly now,” says Raza Rumi, who directs the Park Center of Independent Media at Ithaca College. “A strong civilian government would have meant that the army would have to curtail some of its involvement in national affairs, but in this post-election context, their power and their involvement will continue.”