Sharif vowed to deliver on all the promises he had made during the campaign
For a while it seemed Imran Khan had pulled off yet another impossible victory, but as counting trends firmed up it was Nawaz Sharif leading the pack after Pakistan's historic elections on Saturday. By 11 pm, trends were available for 249 of the National Assembly's 272 seats, and they showed Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) leading in 115 seats, with Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) ahead in 38. The Bhutto family's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) was a poor third with just 32 leads.
The big message from Saturday's elections was the massive turnout, with polling booths across the country having to extend voting time, despite a Taliban threat to voters and a wave of violence in the runup to the exercise. Election commission officials estimated the turnout at over 60 per cent even as bomb blasts and shootings claimed 22 lives on Saturday. The other big shift was the drubbing that the ruling PPP got, putting a question mark on its long-term survival.
About 86 million people - 37 million women and 48 million men - were eligible to vote in the elections, marking the first transition between civilian governments in a country that has been ruled by the military for more than half of its turbulent history.
âLet the election results come and you will see that we will have enough votes to form the government with a simple majority. It's already quite clear,â said Rana Sanaullah, a PML-N leader.
Power in Pakistan has for decades alternated between the PML-N and the PPP whose most prominent figure is President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Opinion polls suggested that disenchantment with the mainstream parties could mean that no one group gets a majority, making the next government unstable and too weak to push through much-needed reform.
Voters were electing 272 members of the National Assembly. To win a simple majority, a party would have to take 137 seats. A further 70 seats are reserved for women and members of non-Muslim minorities, and are allocated to parties on the basis of their performance in the contested constituencies.
To have a majority of the total of 342, a party would thus need 172, a number only Sharif looked like getting late on Saturday. Whoever wins, the next government will have to contend with a Taliban-led militancy, endemic corruption, chronic power cuts and crumbling infrastructure in the nuclear-armed country of 180 million people.
One of the first likely tasks of the government will be to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund for a multi-billion-dollar bailout.
The big message from Saturday's elections was the massive turnout, with polling booths across the country having to extend voting time, despite a Taliban threat to voters and a wave of violence in the runup to the exercise. Election commission officials estimated the turnout at over 60 per cent even as bomb blasts and shootings claimed 22 lives on Saturday. The other big shift was the drubbing that the ruling PPP got, putting a question mark on its long-term survival.
About 86 million people - 37 million women and 48 million men - were eligible to vote in the elections, marking the first transition between civilian governments in a country that has been ruled by the military for more than half of its turbulent history.
âLet the election results come and you will see that we will have enough votes to form the government with a simple majority. It's already quite clear,â said Rana Sanaullah, a PML-N leader.
Power in Pakistan has for decades alternated between the PML-N and the PPP whose most prominent figure is President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Opinion polls suggested that disenchantment with the mainstream parties could mean that no one group gets a majority, making the next government unstable and too weak to push through much-needed reform.
Voters were electing 272 members of the National Assembly. To win a simple majority, a party would have to take 137 seats. A further 70 seats are reserved for women and members of non-Muslim minorities, and are allocated to parties on the basis of their performance in the contested constituencies.
To have a majority of the total of 342, a party would thus need 172, a number only Sharif looked like getting late on Saturday. Whoever wins, the next government will have to contend with a Taliban-led militancy, endemic corruption, chronic power cuts and crumbling infrastructure in the nuclear-armed country of 180 million people.
One of the first likely tasks of the government will be to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund for a multi-billion-dollar bailout.