Within hours of media predicting a lead for the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) chairman, Shehbaz Sharif, on late Wednesday night said that his party "wholly rejected" the election results for "manifest and massive irregularities".
In a series of tweets, Shehbaz lambasted the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for its conduct and delay in declaration of results. Shehbaz alleged that votes were counted in the absence of his party agents, adding it was “unbearable and unacceptable”.
"The mandate of the millions of people who came out to vote has been humiliated. Our democratic process has been pushed back by decades. Had the public mandate been delivered in a fair manner, we would have accepted it happily," he wrote in another tweet.
Junior Sharif also said that he would convene party's Central Executive Meeting on Thursday to decide the next course of action. "We will then hold consultations with other political parties to agree on a shared set of actions. This matter cannot be allowed to go unattended," he added.
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto raised similar concerns about the election results, saying that he hadn't received any information even after midnight. "My candidates complaining polling agents have been thrown out of polling stations across the country. Inexcusable & outrageous," he wrote on Twitter.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), however, cleared the air saying the delay in declaration of results was due to technical reasons and not because of any "conspiracy" as some political parties alleged.
"There only has been a delay; there was no problem in the system. The delay has now happened and we cannot do anything about it," Chief Election Commissioner Sardar Raza Khan said at an early morning press conference, according to Dawn. "This election has been 100 percent fair and transparent."
The ECP officials, in some areas, handed over results on a plain paper, despite the law requiring them to declare results on form 45.
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