BBC News: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tens of millions of Pakistanis head to the polls on Thursday to vote in a new government amid soaring inflation, rising violence and claims of rigging.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The election comes almost two years since the previous prime minister, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, was ousted in a no-confidence vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Khan was later jailed on corruption charges and is barred from standing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three-time PM Nawaz Sharif is on the ballot. Many analysts say it’s Pakistan’s least credible election yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Strict rules around election coverage – including what can be said about candidates, campaigning and opinion polls – remain in place until the end of voting at 1700 local time (1200 GMT). Results have to be released within two weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As many as 128 million people are registered to cast their votes, with almost half under the age of 35.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They will choose between more than 5,000 candidates – of whom just 313 are women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) were considered the two major parties going into the vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, picking out candidates from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has been made more difficult, after it was banned from using the cricket bat symbol under which all its candidates run. Electoral symbols play a key role in a country where more than 40% are unable to read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BBC News: Tens of millions of Pakistanis head to the polls on Thursday to vote in a new government amid soaring inflation, rising violence and claims of rigging. The election comes almost two years since the previous prime minister, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, was ousted in a no-confidence vote. Khan was later jailed on corruption charges and is barred from standing. Three-time PM Nawaz Sharif is on the ballot. Many analysts say it’s Pakistan’s least credible election yet. Strict rules around election coverage – including what can be said about candidates, campaigning and opinion polls – remain in place until the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37501,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37502,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37500\/revisions\/37502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}