Islamabad
\nPakistan\u2019s former ruling party PML-N conceded defeat to cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan ahead of final results from the country\u2019s disputed election, which European Union monitors said on Friday had not been fought on a level-playing field.<\/p>\n
Khan, during a speech declaring victory on Thursday, offered to investigate Opposition allegations of vote-rigging and said he wanted to \u201cunite\u201d the country under his leadership.<\/p>\n
The party of jailed ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif initially rejected the so far incomplete results, but by Friday its leaders appeared to accept that Khan would be the next prime minister.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to sit on opposition benches, despite all the reservations,\u201d said Hamza Shehbaz Sharif, a parliamentarian and the nephew of Nawaz Sharif, who is in prison after being convicted on corruption charges he disputes.<\/p>\n
The allegations of rigging in Wednesday\u2019s election followed a bitter campaign in which Pakistan\u2019s powerful military was accused of tilting the race in favour of Khan, and trying to erase democratic gains made since the most recent spell of military rule ended in 2008.<\/p>\n
The EU Election Observation Mission, in its preliminary findings, said the electoral process was \u201cnot as good\u201d as the 2013 election and campaign week featured a \u201clack of equality\u201d that meant it was not a level playing field for all parties.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of our interlocutors acknowledged a systematic effort to undermine the former ruling party through cases of corruption, contempt of court and terrorist charges against its leaders and candidates,\u201d chief EU observer Michael Gahler told a news conference. The mission included 120 observers who visited 582 polling stations in all the provinces except Baluchistan.<\/p>\n
Gahler said EU observers had not witnessed any military interference in polling stations they assessed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn election day, polling was assessed as well conducted and transparent,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, counting was somewhat problematic with staff not always following the procedures.\u201d He added later: \u201cThe credibility or the legitimacy of this process, that is for the people of Pakistan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Islamabad Pakistan\u2019s former ruling party PML-N conceded defeat to cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan ahead of final results from the country\u2019s disputed election, which European Union monitors said on Friday had not been fought on a level-playing field. Khan, during a speech declaring victory on Thursday, offered to investigate Opposition allegations of vote-rigging and said he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37549,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37547\/revisions\/37549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}