National Vote in Pakistan: "The Biggest Theft of an Election Since the 1970s"

UPDATE: From Reuters' "Pakistan's Imran Khan declares victory, on verge of becoming prime minister":

With 48 percent of the total vote counted, Khan’s PTI was listed by the ECP in its provisional results as leading in 113 of 272 contested National Assembly constituencies.

Sharif’s PML-N was ahead in 64 constituencies, and the PPP, led by the son of assassinated two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto, led in 42 constituencies.

Although Khan still appeared likely to fall short of the 137 seats needed for a majority in the National Assembly, he should have no problems finding coalition partners from smaller parties and independents.

[snip] 

Investors welcomed Khan's election success, with Pakistan's benchmark 100-share index .KSE surging as much as 1.9 percent to 42,136 points in early trade, before closing 1.8 percent up. Analysts said there was relief Khan was unlikely to have to rely on major opposition parties in a messy coalition.

Khan has promised an “Islamic welfare state” and cast his populist campaign as a battle to topple a predatory political elite hindering development in the impoverished nation of 208 million, where the illiteracy rate hovers above 40 percent.

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After 9/11 and for much of the aughts mainstream U.S. media coverage of Pakistan was relatively plentiful in terms of foreign affairs reporting. There was broad if superficial understanding that 9/11 tracked back to Pakistan, and then following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan it was common to read in the "newspaper of record" that Pakistan's powerful equivalent of the CIA, the ISI, Inter-Services Intelligence, was orchestrating the Taliban's insurgency.

If I had to guess I'd say at some point during Obama's second term, as the U.S. military announced that it was winding down its mission in Afghanistan, Pakistan -- the sixth largest country on the planet; home to the "Muslim bomb" -- largely disappeared from American collective consciousness, such as it is.

Trump brought back Pakistan front and center briefly at the beginning of the year when he threatened to cut foreign aid to the country due to its support for terrorism.

Yesterday there was a national election in Pakistan. If you were going to choose from two stories to read -- Jeffrey Gettleman's "Imran Khan, Former Cricket Star, Pulls Into Lead in Pakistan’s Vote Count" or the Guardian's roundup, "Pakistan election in disarray as incumbent rejects result" -- I'd go with the Guardian.

The Guardian says that Imran Khan's party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), looks to have won enough to seats to form a government. But The New York Times says the PTI has come up short.

On top of it all is a broad rejection of the election by parties other than the PTI due to vote-rigging, not to mention a delay in the official count because of a software meltdown. According to the Guardian:

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), an independent body, blamed the delay in announcing the result on a breakdown in the Results Transmission Software it purchased from a British company.

“There’s no conspiracy, nor any pressure in delay of the results,” the ECP secretary, Babar Yaqoob, told reporters. “The delay is being caused because the result transmission system has collapsed.”

[snip] 

As election workers sorted through massive piles of paper ballots, almost all the parties – except the PTI – alleged that their polling agents had been excluded from polling stations. 

Bilawal Bhutto, the leader of the liberal Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) – the country’s third-largest party – tweeted it was “inexcusable and outrageous” that his activists had been excluded “across the country”.

The complaint was echoed by his rival Khadim Rizvi, the foul-mouthed cleric who leads the far-right Islamist group, Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP). “This is the worst rigging in history,” said a spokesman for Rizvi.

The PMLN senator Musadik Malik told journalists that security officials had taken over proceedings inside polling stations, with a particular focus on constituencies where the race was close between the PTI and PMLN.

“If what most political parties are alleging is true,” Aqil Shah of Oklahoma University said, “it would be the biggest theft of an election since the 1970s”, adding that the the parties should “unite and demand a repeat.