Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and cricket star turned politician Imran Khan were Saturday elected into parliament in the country’s landmark elections. Sharif won from a constitency in Sargodha, report agencies.
“Nawaz Sharif has won his seat from a constitency in Sargodha,” Pakistan Muslim League-N spokesman Siddiqul Farooq told AFP by telephone.
At PML-N headquarters in the eastern city of Lahore about 300 to 400 supporters who were watching the results coming in on television let out a huge cheer when Sharif’s win was announced.
Sharif served as prime minister from 1990-93, when he was sacked for corruption, and from 1997-99, when he was deposed by the military, although his family say he is a changed man who will this time govern more successfully.
Khan was elected in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
“People have expressed confidence in Imran Khan and have rejected us,” former cabinet minister and senior Awami National Party (ANP) member Ghulam Bilour told private Express TV.
The seat in Peshawar was one of four that Khan contested.
“I congratulate him,” Bilour told the TV channel.
The secular ANP led the outgoing government in northwestern province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“People wanted change and I think what has happened was correct. Now it is up to us to think why people have rejected us,” Bilour said.
Khan’s centre-right Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party is looking to make a breakthrough into national politics at Saturday’s polls.
It boycotted the last elections in 2008 and won only one seat, for Khan, in 2002.
The election, in which 86 million people were eligible to vote, will bring the first transition between civilian governments in a country ruled by the military for more than half of its turbulent history.
The election commission raised concerns about threats to its staff in Karachi, which it says has prevented them from performing their duties, but the organisation was quick to praise the polls as voting ended.
“The election commission of Pakistan was successful in conducting the elections. We have a huge turnout in Punjab,” commission secretary Ishtiaq Ahmed told a news conference in Islamabad.
Ahmed stopped short of announcing a precise turnout figure, but said that it was “very good”.
Despite pre-election violence, and attacks on Saturday which killed at least 17 people, millions turned out to vote.
The partial count showed that while Sharif was in the lead, his party could lose 15 of its seats in the critical province of Punjab to Khan, whose emergence on the political stage has up-ended a system dominated by two parties.
Television channels showed Khan’s party was ahead in more than 50 of the 272 seats in the election.
Khan, Pakistan’s best-known sportsman who led a playboy lifestyle in his younger days, is seen by many as a refreshing change from the dynastic politicians who long relied on a patronage system to win votes.
His Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) appeals mostly to young, urban voters because of his calls for an end to corruption, a new political landscape and a halt to US drone strikes on Pakistani soil. About one-third of the country’s population is under the age of 30.
Source: UNBConnect
