ISLAMABAD, May 16: ANP chief Asfandyar Wali Khan has credited the Taliban for successfully engineering the rout of his party in recent elections.

At the same time, he fired a broadside at the Election Commission of Pakistan which, according to him, was so ineffective in providing a level playing field to all the parties that it appeared the actual referee in the fight was Hakimullah Mehsud and not Justice Fakhruddin Ibrahim.

Mr Khan was addressing a press conference here on Thursday to analyse the results of the May 11 elections. He said he accepted the results, despite reservations, and his party would sit on the opposition benches in the National Assembly and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan assemblies.

“We are democratic people. Our elders have offered sacrifices for democracy. Therefore, despite having reservations, we accept the election results,” Mr Khan said after presiding over the first meeting of ANP’s central working committee after the elections.

Flanked by senior party leaders Afrasiab Khattak, Haji Adeel and Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, Mr Khan said the Election Commission did nothing to provide a level playing field to his party to run the election campaign which was targeted by terrorists.

“We thought that the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) would be the referee. But Hakimullah Mehsud was the referee and not Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim,” Mr Khan said referring to Taliban’s threats and attacks on ANP’s candidates and meetings during the election campaign. He said 61 ANP activists had been killed in 31 terrorist attacks on the party’s meetings and offices between March 30 and May 11.

The ANP chief said he had written letters to the CEC, the caretaker prime minister, the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the KP chief minister informing them about the “pre-poll rigging”, but there was no response from any of them. “We kept on wailing, but no-one listened to us,” he said, adding that his party’s candidates had been thrown in the wrestling ring with their hands and feet tied.

Mr Khan, who lost his NA seat in his hometown of Charsadda to a JUI-F man, expressed the hope that his party would soon revive itself and again get the people’s mandate which, according to him, had been “snatched from the party through terrorism”.

The former ruling party in KP and a partner in the PPP-led coalition government at the centre, the ANP this time only managed to secure four seats in the KP Assembly and one each in the National Assembly and Balochistan Assembly.

The ANP chief ruled out joining any alliance even in the opposition and said the party would take decisions on “issue-to-issue basis” as an “independent opposition”. He vowed to resist every move aimed at obstructing the implementation of 18th amendment.

Mr Khan said he had faced pressure within the party to boycott the elections, but he decided against it and believed that such a decision could provide an opportunity to others to do the same and that could undermine the democratic process.

He said his party would fully participate in by-elections.

Answering a question about allegations of rigging in some constituencies, he said it was unfortunate that parties were alleging rigging only in constituencies where they had lost while declaring the polls as fair and transparent in constituencies where they had won. “This trend and double standard must come to an end. Either accept the results as a whole or reject the elections as a whole.”

Mr Khan said he would soon constitute committees to review the causes of the party’s defeat. He said he himself was ready to face punishment if found responsible for the defeat.

Responding to a question about the poor performance of the KP government, he said if their performance was not good they should have been allowed to be ousted by people through the ballot, instead of having been targeted by terrorists.

He requested the parties forming governments at the centre and in the provinces to respect each other’s mandate and fulfil the promises they had made during the election campaign.

Responding to a question, he said the parties forming the government had been spared by the Taliban during the election campaign. He said when his party was in power, the Taliban had desired to make these parties guarantors in their talks with the government. Now these guarantors were going to form governments and one could hope that they would restore peace in the country, he added.

In reply to a question about the victories of the PPP and MQM in Sindh despite being on the hit-list of terrorists, Mr Khan said the situation in KP was not the same as in Karachi. The Taliban collected money from Karachi whereas in KP there was a war to gain space, he added.

He warned that Pakistan could face the worst law and order situation if a “concrete exit policy” was not adopted after the withdrawal of US and Nato forces from Afghanistan in 2014.