ISLAMABAD - The late-night result announced by election officials shattered dreams of opposition Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) of conquering seat of Mayor Islamabad leaving the two major parties on the mercy of independent candidates that hold the key to the election of mayor.
Though the initial results of local government (LG) polls in Islamabad held Monday triggered the PTI to rejoice its victories in urban parts of Islamabad, results announced by election staff late in the night showed Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is the winning party.
With PTI winning 17 slots of Chairman on 16 union councils, the PML-N said it swept 19 union councils besides having enough number of nonpartisan winning candidates who tilted towards the ruling party.
The independents clinched 13 slots of chairman union councils out of the total 50 slots. The successful 50 chairmen will elect Mayor of Islamabad.
As both PTI and the PML-N lacking the strength to elect Mayor with their respective seats in hands, all eyes are on the successful independent candidates that will enable either of the two parties to clinch the seat of Mayor Islamabad.
Shocked by the late night election result that gave upper hand to the PML-N in the polls, Chairman PTI Imran Khan said his party will be challenging results of seven union councils saying the results were suddenly altered overnight after PMLN was effectively exposed by his party.
Developments taking place on Tuesday indicated that the PTI has already sense the danger of losing the slot of Mayor. The PTI’s MNA Asad Umar complained the ruling party was buying the loyalties of independent candidates using state resources.
PML-N’s leader and Minister of State for Capital Administration AND Development Division or CADD Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhary told a news conference that majority of the independent candidates will join the PML-N soon.
He said four of the nonpartisan aspirants had applied for PML-N tickets and were staunch workers of the party. The minister said the party is also in touch with four others while the remaining four would also hopefully join PML-N.
But on the other hand, the PTI too is confident that the independent candidates will join its ranks ahead of election to the seat of Mayor amid complains that the government was using money to buy the nonpartisan candidates.
However, the party has lost hopes of wooing the winning independent candidates like Pir Adil, union council No 2, Chaudhary Nadeem union council No.14, Jamil Khokhar union council 23 (Bani Gala) and Chaudhary Kamran union council No.31.
But the PTI has announced it will put up its candidate for Mayor Islamabad. Though the PTI celebrated its victory after initial results poured in, Chairman Imran Khan said in a tweet, “We will never have free & fair elections until ECP is independent and depoliticized and unless those indulging in crime of rigging are punished”.
Though almost entire political parties participated in the first ever party based polls in Islamabad, the contest remained a battle between two political opponents, the PML-N and PTI as the rest of political parties could not grab a single seat on slots of Chairman union councils.
An independent election observer Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) said that despite several positives, its observers documented 743 illegalities and irregularities of various natures at 148 observed polling stations, reinforcing the need for greater powers and authority required by the ECP to hold the erring officials accountable.
On an average, at least five violations were reported from each polling station from where information was received on Election Day, which is almost similar to the scale of issues documented in the first two phases of the local government elections in Punjab and Sindh provinces.
However, FAFEN said the ECP monitoring was observed to have improved in Islamabad. Presiding officers at 43 percent of observed polling stations reported that some representative of ECP or the Returning Officer had visited through the day for monitoring the quality of the polling process.
Official sources in ECP told The Nation that the commission failed to announce official results despite that the District Returning Officer (DRO) had forwarded results of majority of polling stations.
He said the GIS system introduced by IT wing of the ECP had gathered results of 200 polling stations but the ECP could not made the findings public after the poll was closed.
And on Tuesday, the ECP refrained from making the official results public after DRO Aleem Shahab sent the consolidated results to election branch. “I have shared the results with ECP,” Mr Shahab told The Nation.