Ex-Premier Is Set to Regain Power in Pakistan Vote

Pakistani Party Leader Looks Forward, as Claims of Vote-Rigging Swirl

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A poster for former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a cafe in Lahore, Pakistan. The country’s election officials said final results would take days.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan â€" Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif began talks on Sunday to form a new government, as partial election returns suggested that he and his party would have a commanding hold on Parliament. But Pakistani election officials said final results would take days, even as outrage grew over accusations of rampant vote-rigging, particularly in Karachi.

Mr. Sharif’s main opponent, Imran Khan, in his first public comments since Saturday’s election, said his party would investigate reports of irregularities. His supporters staged protests in Karachi outside the Election Commission office and in the upscale Clifton neighborhood, demanding a new election for all of that port city’s parliamentary seats. They also demonstrated into the night in Lahore.

“There was rigging in Lahore,” Mr. Khan said in a video message recorded at the hospital in Lahore where he was recovering after a serious fall last week. “What happened in Karachi was witnessed by everyone.”

Mr. Khan’s anticorruption campaign electrified the news media and large crowds in the weeks before the vote. But as returns trickled in over the weekend, it became increasingly apparent that his party would get only about 30 of the 272 seats in Parliament. And even the news of possible consolation prizes â€" having his party win control of the regional government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, and becoming the new opposition leader â€" was still up in the air, pending further results.

The secretary of the Election Commission of Pakistan, Ishtiaq Ahmad Khan, said that the final parliamentary count was delayed because of legal requirements for verification, and that the official results would not come before midweek. But he denied claims by some political workers that the delay would make it easier to falsify results.

“The nation should not have any doubt or apprehension regarding the results,” he said during a news conference here in Islamabad, the capital. He emphasized that as of Sunday night, the winners of only 44 of the 272 seats had been officially determined.

Officials in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, said voting there had been marred by extensive violence and intimidation on Saturday, including the forcible takeover of polling stations in some districts. They also cited the late arrival of election materials and widespread reports of fraud.

Local observer groups claimed that the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the political party that has traditionally controlled Karachi, often through brute force, frequently clashed with its political rivals in that city. Armed supporters of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Pakistan Peoples Party were reported to have taken over polling stations in some Karachi election districts.

In particular, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and Jamaat-e-Islami, a political religious party, accused the Muttahida Qaumi Movement of extensive vote-rigging in a wealthy district of Karachi. The Election Commission said it had received complaints about seven parliamentary districts in the city.

Leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Mr. Sharif’s center-right party, also made accusations of fraud in parts of the surrounding Sindh Province. Sindh has long been a stronghold of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the former national governing party whose fortunes greatly shrank in this election. Still, many projections had it managing to keep its hold on the Sindh provincial government.

Meanwhile, analysts projected a commanding victory for Mr. Sharif, a 63-year-old conservative politician who was ousted by the military and sent into exile in 1999, returning in 2007 to build a new political movement.

Most predictions had his party winning more than 120 parliamentary seats, well past the threshold of 100 that analysts said would allow him to form a government mostly on his own terms. On Sunday, he began meeting with senior party leaders about independent lawmakers and factions he could negotiate with to form a coalition government, party officials said.

Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 13, 2013, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Pakistani Party Leader Looks Forward, as Claims of Vote-Rigging Swirl.