ISLAMABAD: Despite polling having concluded at 5pm in the general elections on Thursday, the nation is waiting for the results after more than eight hours have passed into midnight.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has not given any reason for the delay leading to suspicions from the contesting parties regarding the manipulation of the results.
Local media, private channels, and state TV started announcing results at a fast pace in the early hours, but the transmission became slow as the time passed.
Although results are coming in from interior Sindh, the results in the provincial capital Lahore and the country’s largest city, Karachi, are emerging at a slow pace.
Similarly, in the Punjab province, results are also being received slowly. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and other parties including the PPP have expressed concerns and reservations over this delay.
It should be noted that in 2018, when the results were initially announced through Result Transmission System (RTS), the system faced a halt during the night, and the process of result transmission could not proceed.
When the results were delayed until the next day, certain political parties expressed concerns and reservations.
This time around, the ECP introduced a new system called the Election Management System (EMS) to tabulate the results. Presiding officers had been asked to send results via mobile.
It is to mention here that the mobile network was shut down for security reasons on February 8, the polling day.
According to the ECP officials, the results could also be sent offline.
