LAHORE – Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) president and one of the top contenders for Prime Minister officer, Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday rejected results of General Elections 2018 citing ‘massive rigging’ across country.
“I have received complaints from all over Pakistan,” the former Punjab chief minister said in an emergency press conference at his residence in Lahore’s Model Town. “What happened today took Pakistan 30 years back. I have never seen such a horrendous situation in my entire political career,” he added.
Shehbaz said that the PML-N’s polling agents were thrown out during the vote count and were not given form 45. “I received complaints from many areas that the polling agents were not given form 45. Our agents were thrown out from Dera Ghazi Khan,” he added.
https://twitter.com/CMShehbaz/status/1022195178302361600
Sharif went on to say that “rigging has inflicted massive blow on Pakistan’s democratic system” and stated that Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has utterly failed in carrying out transparent elections.
Shehbaz stated that PML-N would devise future strategy by collaborating with other political parties.
Later, speaking on the occasion, PML-N leader Mushahid Hussain Syed termed the polls, ‘a selection rather than an election’. “It has been the first time in Pakistan’s history that as many as five political parties are expressing the same reservation,” Syed said.
“This has been dirtiest election in Pakistan’s history.”
Pakistan voted on Wednesday for the country’s second consecutive democratic transfer of power.
Polling began at 8AM across the country’s 85,307 polling stations and continued until 6PM despite calls by several major parties, including PML-N, PPP and PTI, to extend the polling time by an hour.
The parties had complained of “a slow voting process” and thus sought more time to facilitate voters — a request that was dismissed by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
The election campaign was marred by violence with three candidates killed in targetted attacks and culminated with a suicide blast outside a polling station in Quetta which claimed at least 31 lives.
However, undeterred, several of Pakistan’s nearly 106 million registered voters stepped out to cast their ballot, including women in areas where they previously stood disenfranchised due to various issues.
