A senior Pakistani official admits he helped manipulate the vote

A senior Pakistani official admitted on Saturday that he helped manipulate the outcome of the country's elections – a startling claim that reinforced feelings that the vote was among the least credible in Pakistan's history and exacerbated the unrest that has engulfed it. has gripped the country since people went to the polls. this month.

The official, Liaquat Ali Chatha, is a top official in Punjab province who oversees Rawalpindi, a garrison city where the army is headquartered, and three neighboring districts. He said he would resign from his position and turn himself in to the police.

“We have turned losers into winners, flipping the margins of 70,000 votes of independent candidates for 13 seats in the national parliament,” he said at a press conference on Saturday, referring to shifting votes of independent candidates aligned with Imran Khan, the former prime minister whose party the army had tried to sideline ahead of the vote. He suggested other senior officials had been part of the plan, saying he couldn't sleep at night after “stabbing the country in the back.”

Mr Chatha's admission came just over a week after Pakistanis went to the polls for the first time since Mr Khan fell out with the military and was ousted by parliament in 2022. Most had expected an easy victory for the party, backed by the country's powerful. military, but instead candidates aligned with Mr. Khan won more seats than any other party, although they fell short of a simple majority.

Mr Khan was not on the ballot; he was imprisoned and disqualified from his candidacy after convictions for crimes his supporters called fabricated, but the victory was clearly his. It was one of the biggest upsets in electoral history in Pakistan, where the military has typically manipulated election results by winnowing the field of candidates through intimidation, paving the way for its favored party to win.

The success of the candidates who joined Mr. Khan's party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), turned that playbook on its head and pushed the country's political scene into uncharted territory.

Mr Chatha's admission appeared to lend weight to PTI allegations that the military had tampered with vote counts in dozens of races, especially in Punjab, the country's most populous province. Party leaders have vowed to challenge these results in court.

As Mr Khan's supporters, along with members of other smaller parties in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan, protested strongly against the election results, PTI leaders seized on Mr Chatha's words as justification.

“The conscience of the Rawalpindi commissioner has been awakened,” said Haleem Adil Sheikh, a PTI leader in Pakistan's capital Karachi, addressing a large crowd of protesters on Saturday. “Every officer should follow him and expose the massive manipulation in the polls.”

The protests were a rebuke to the country's military, which carried out a months-long crackdown on the PTI before the elections to secure a victory for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN).

Last week, the PMLN, led by three-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, announced that it had put together a coalition with the country's third-largest party, the Pakistan People's Party, to lead the next government.

“The political parties' claims take on new weight with this unexpected admission from a senior official,” said Tausif Ahmed Khan, a political analyst based in Karachi. Mr Chatha's claims raise “serious concerns about the integrity of the electoral process and the potential illegitimacy of any future government formed on the basis of these disputed results”, he added.

Adding to the criticism, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the country's independent watchdog, released a scathing report on Saturday raising serious concerns about the credibility and integrity of the February 8 vote. The report noted that the integrity of the elections was “compromised” by pressure from “extra-democratic circles,” meaning the military.

It was not immediately clear what would emerge from Mr Chatha's press conference. Government officials on Saturday directed him to report to the provincial government, according to a directive issued by the Punjab governor.

The same day, Pakistan's Election Commission, the country's main polling body, rejected Mr Chatha's allegations and ordered an “impartial investigation” into complaints that election results had been manipulated.

As of Sunday, it was uncertain whether Rawalpindi police had arrested him.

Christina Goudbaum reporting contributed.