Highlights

JI holds talks with both PPP and PTI

PPP ready to give up mayorship in exchange for control of towns

Despite activists claiming to have won more seats, the tally remains largely unchanged

One week after the local bodies elections were held in seven districts of Karachi division, the final results have not been announced as vote recount continues in several constituencies.

None of the three leading parties, that is the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Jamat-e-Islami (JI) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has successfully negotiated an alliance to rule the city. A coalition is inevitable since no party was able to win a simple majority or more than 50% of the UCs in Karachi.

Last Sunday, polling was held in 235 of 246 Union Committees (UCs) in seven Karachi districts. Millions of votes were cast to elect UC chairmen who will form electrorate to chose the city mayor. The voters have also elected deputy UC chairmen who will chose town nazims in Karachi’s 25 towns.

Read more on the process here: How your vote elects Karachi’s nextmayor

Over 28 hours after the polling ended on Sunday evening, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) released aggregate results for 235 UCs on Tuesday night.

However, political parties demanded a vote recount in several constituencies and PPP lost two UCs to JI.

After this small change in the aggregate results, the party position was as follows:

Since Tuesday, vote recount is being held on every other UC in the city but the results have remained unchanged, says Aaj News reporter Sohail Rab Khan.

Political activits from the three leading parties, however, have claimed to have won more seats during the recount process. This was not confirmed by the ECP.

Election on 11 seats were postponed after some of the candidate died after submitting the nomination papers over six months ago when the election were due to take place originally.

In additional to 246 direct seats, there are 121 seats reserved for women, minorities, youth, labourers, and differently abled people. The reserved seats will be distributed among political parties according the number of the UCs they have won in the direct election.

The donut below shows the final party position aftre adding reserved seats.

Talks to hammer out an alliance

The PPP, which emerged the largest winner, has held talk with JI for an alliance.

The PPP is willing to give up city mayorship in exchange of controls in towns, sources told Aaj News reporter Qazi Asif.

However, there was no headway in the talks when PPP’s Saeed Ghani visited JI’s Hafiz Naeemur Rehman.

Since the ECP has not announced detailed results party positions in towns also remain ambiguous.

The JI has also entered into negotiations with PTI and Ali Zaidi visited Naeem on Saturday.

But JI and PTI too could not announce an alliance.

Source claim PTI believes its seats were given to JI and PPP.

At a joint press talk with Naeem, PTI’s Ali Zaidi announced that the two parties had formed a committee to “wrest back the stolen mandate.”

Zaidi said over 40 constituencies were stolen from the PTI.

Hafiz Naeem said that JI was not going to enter into any compromise on the mayorship and that it was in a position to win the mayoral election.

Naeem seemed to dismiss the notion that JI must join PPP as it would allow a JI mayor to receive funds from the provincial government. He said it was the city’s money that the provincial government controlled.

Ali Zaidi claimed that the PTI will form the next Sindh government and would approve funds for the city.