ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party on Tuesday demanded Pakistan’s top election official step down over his failure to ensure free and fair national polls this month.
Pakistan’s national election on Feb. 8 were marred by a nationwide outage of mobile phone networks over security concerns and delays in constituency results by election officials.
Several political parties, including Khan’s PTI, have since been protesting alleged rigging of polls and say the results were changed in favor of their opponents. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) denies the allegations.
On Tuesday, Gohar Khan, interim chairman of Khan’s party, told reporters that his party wanted Chief Election Commissioner Sikander Sultan Raja to immediately step down from his post.
“I think this is the appropriate time for chief election commissioner to step down from his post,” Gohar said, after meeting Khan at Rawalpindi’s Adiala prison.
“If he [Raja] could not fulfil such a big responsibility [to organize free and fair elections] and in his presence, the mandate was stolen, then there cannot be another time for us to demand [his resignation].”
Gohar said the PTI made the demand for Raja’s resignation in light of instructions given to them by Khan.
Khan, who has been in jail since August on a slew of charges, fell out with the generals and was ousted from power in a parliamentary no-trust vote in April 2022.
His PTI party was severely hamstrung ahead of the election, with rallies banned, its party symbol taken away, and dozens of its candidates rejected from eligibility to stand.
Still independent candidates, most loyal to Khan, managed to grab the highest 101 parliamentary seats, according to official results.
They were followed by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif that bagged 75 seats and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) that came in third with 54 seats.
However, none of them has yet been able to form the government as negotiations continue.
Khan’s party says its victory was turned into defeat in nearly two dozen constituencies across the country and demands the ECP rectify the results.