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Security guards arrest a Khan Party supporter during protests on Sunday

Photo: KM Chaudary / AP

Independent candidates won the most votes in Pakistan's parliamentary election on Thursday, winning 101 seats, according to final results. Many of them are connected to the party of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan, Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Because they were excluded from the election, their candidates had to run as independents. The Kahn party denounced this as election fraud and called for protests - whereupon the police threatened to take tough action against the demonstrators on Sunday.

It is still unclear who will direct the fate of the nuclear power in Islamabad in the future. According to official figures, the Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, founded by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and supported by the military, won 75 seats and declared itself the party with the most seats. The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) won 54 seats. Smaller parties won 34 seats, two remained vacant.

Leading PTI politicians said they would have won even more seats had it not been for the electoral fraud they denounced. The PTI has received a “mandate from the people” to form the next government. "The people have chosen Imran Khan," said PTI leader Gohar Ali Khan in an interview.

Khan was detained during the election campaign

Authorities threatened a crackdown, citing a colonial-era law banning public gatherings. "Some people are inciting illegal gatherings around the Election Commission" and other government authorities, the Islamabad police said and announced legal action.

Numerous police officers were deployed in Lahore in the east. AFP news agency reporters observed several small protests by the PTI and other parties across the country, which passed without incident. Most of them were attended by no more than a few hundred people.

The election campaign in Pakistan was marred by violence, the imprisonment of Khan and the obstruction of his PTI party by the military-run establishment. A few days before the election, the popular former head of government and former cricket star was sentenced to long prison terms for treason, bribery and a marriage that was declared illegal.

lki/AFP