ISLAMABAD -- The wife of ousted Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif on Sunday won the parliamentary seat that he vacated after the country's Supreme Court disqualified him for concealing assets, according to unofficial results.
Sharif was ousted by the Supreme Court in July after a legal battle over charges that he and his family had hidden their wealth in overseas real estate. His wife, Kulsoom Nawaz Sharif, currently hospitalized in London with lymphoma, won the seat in the eastern city of Lahore.
She secured the race in absentia as the candidate from the Pakistan Muslim League-N party.
But in a day marred by vote-rigging allegations and physical clashes at polling stations, opposition candidate Dr. Yasmin Rashid of the rival Movement for Justice party made a surprisingly strong showing. Returns showed the candidates running neck-and-neck all evening, but with all 220 polling stations counted, Kulsoom Nawaz Sharif had pulled ahead to defeat Rashid by about 13,000 votes.
Rashid conceded defeat while talking to reporters and supporters.
Still, many analysts said, the relatively close margin was in itself an upset. The Lahore district is considered a bellwether whose voters have been among the Muslim League's most reliable supporters for a generation. Nawaz Sharif has been elected prime minister three times.
With national elections due next year, the surprisingly strong showing could help put the opposition leader Imran Khan -- a former cricket champion -- in a position to challenge them for political dominance in Punjab province, and thus nationwide.
Ayaz Amir, a veteran commentator, told a TV news channel two hours before the final tally that a narrow victory for the Muslim League would be seen as a virtual defeat. "This is their stronghold," Amir said.
On Saturday, Khan, 64, issued an emotional call to arms and drew thousands of followers to a rally more than 100 miles from Lahore, where he dubbed the election an "epic battle" between "the powerful and the weak." Khan was barred by electoral law from campaigning in the district.
"All of Pakistan is watching you," Khan told the voters in Lahore, saying the court ruling against Nawaz Sharif had given Pakistanis hope for changing a system of elite corruption and wealth that has left tens of millions languishing in abject poverty. "Will you stand with your judiciary or with the biggest thieves of this country?"
Meanwhile, Sharif, his wife and many of his close aides were nearly silent as they waited out the election thousands of miles away in London. Pakistan's current prime minister and foreign minister were also there, en route to a United Nations meeting in New York. Foreign Minister Khawaja Asia told journalists in London that the polling-day complaints would be reviewed by the election commission. "However, we will win," he added.
Sharif's daughter Maryam, 43, has been the chief campaigner in the race, which has served as a test of her political prospects. She has spoken at dozens of outdoor rallies, accompanied by booming music and showered by truckloads of rose petals, each time asking voters to vindicate her father's name, remember his hard work for the nation and choose "the lion," which is the family and party symbol.
She has also become the family's defender in the continuing legal battles faced by Sharif and his children, who were accused by Khan and his allies of hiding financial assets overseas. Now, on top of the high court ouster of Sharif, an "accountability" court has called on him and his children to appear on charges of corruption this month.
In an interview in GEO television news Saturday, Kulsoom Nawaz Sharif dismissed the new court action as a vendetta, saying, "We were not given the opportunity of a fair trial" and "the whole world was astonished over the verdict." She said the people of Pakistan "know everything, and they have supported us throughout."
Polls have suggested consistently that the pro-Sharif vote would prevail despite the momentum for change aroused by Khan's movement and the Sharifs' legal woes. They noted that despite downtrodden conditions and poverty in many areas of Lahore, loyalty still runs strong for the family that has dominated the region for years, especially for Sharif.
"I went to [the electoral district] and I saw dirty streets, filthy lanes and polluted water. However, amazingly, most voters still sat they will vote for Nawaz Sharif, who was elected many times from this area," Iftikhar Ahmed, a veteran political analyst, said in a TV interview Sunday afternoon. "The psyche is very strange when people with so many troubles still want to vote for the same people."
Information for this article was contributed by Pamela Constable and Shaiq Hussain of The Washington Post; by Mehreen Zahra-Malik of The New York Times; and by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 09/18/2017