He’s been shot, jailed, had his political party effectively banned, and name purged from mainstream media. But you just can’t keep Imran Khan down.

Preliminary results from Thursday’s election in Pakistan seem to show that independent candidates affiliated with Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party have a chance of securing a plurality of legislative seats despite myriad irregularities, which continued through polling day, designed to hobble such an outcome.

The PTI already had its famed cricket-bat logo banned, and a nationwide suspension of cellphone networks on Thursday hindered party officials from informing supporters of their preferred independent candidate for each constituency. (The government claimed the blackout was for security reasons despite such measures being deemed illegal by Pakistan’s High Court.) In addition, exit polls were banned and the PTI complained that their agents were barred from monitoring polling stations. “The amount of rigging going on is beyond ridiculous,” Zulfi Bukhari, a former Minister of State under Khan, tells TIME.

Still, when results finally started trickling in—over 10 hours later than customary, which in itself observers say is highly suspicious—the PTI was neck and neck with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of three-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, with the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of assassinated ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, in third place.

Sharif is the preferred candidate of Pakistan’s powerful military, which, despite backing his ouster thrice in the past, recently allowed the 74-year-old back from exile in the U.K., quashed his corruption conviction, and repealed his lifetime ban from politics. Sharif’s speedy rehabilitation stood in stark contrast to the generals’ Khan-and-PTI purge.

“No one rules without the tacit support of the military,” says Maya Tudor, an associate professor of government and public policy at Oxford University. “What's different this time is how overtly the military is targeting the PTI, because they have grassroots support and are technologically savvy.”

Yet even if the PTI against all odds secures a plurality of legislative seats, many obstacles to forming a government remain.

Since its lawmakers are officially independents, there’s no obligation for them to vote along party lines for key appointments, raising the prospect of coerced defections. Moreover, the PTI is not eligible to its share of the National Assembly’s 70 “reserved seats” for women and minorities that are divvied up according to a party’s proportion of the overall vote. And then there’s the fact that Khan, 71, remains in prison and was unable to stand as a lawmaker himself. Even before the vote, there were widespread rumors of a power-sharing pact between the PML-N and PPP, with Sharif serving as prime minister and Zardari as president. A coalition between the two remains the most likely outcome.

Still, the strength of PTI’s showing is a bloody nose for Pakistan’s military, which previously backed Khan before his 2018 election victory. However, the generals fell out spectacularly with the former national cricket captain and engineered his ouster in an April 2022 no-confidence vote. Since then, Khan has survived an assassination attempt and weathered a tsunami of over 180 legal challenges. In recent weeks alone, he received prison sentences totaling 31 years for corruption, leaking state secrets, and having an “un-Islamic” marriage.

Yet his popularity remained strong leading up to the vote, especially among young Pakistanis, with voters aged 18-35 comprising 45% of the nearly 130 million-strong electorate. “It's very clear that the military was nervous and then to see PTI exceed expectations is absolutely a big blow,” says Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center.

The Pakistani public and political class now await the full results and, no doubt, much horse-trading to come. The nuclear-armed nation of 240 million can little afford a power vacuum with whoever ends up taking the top job facing no shortage of crises. Pakistanis are suffering with Asia’s highest inflation, which reached 29.7% year-over-year in December. The South Asian nation only narrowly avoided a sovereign default last summer due to a $3 billion IMF bailout and a new deal by next month is thought essential to avoid economic collapse.

Pakistan also faces an increasingly tense security situation on its borders. Despite strong historic ties with the Afghan Taliban, Islamabad has recently fallen out with Kabul over cross-border terrorist attacks and Pakistan’s expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees, many of whom have lived inside the country for decades. And last month, Pakistan and Iran exchanged tit-for-tat air strikes on alleged militant bases on each other's territory. What’s more, Islamabad recently accused India of running an assassination campaign inside its territory, further fraying ties with its historic nemesis to the east.

And presuming Pakistan’s military continues to pursue its goal of shutting the PTI out of power, the question remains how PTI supporters will react to their disenfranchisement, not least given the grim state of the economy. On May 9, PTI supporters ransacked military premises in response to an earlier, fleeting arrest of Khan. He may remain behind bars, but Thursday’s election shows the sporting icon is far from done as a political force.

“The military wants the next government to focus on economic recovery and clearly hoped it could put the Imran Khan genie back into the bottle by having him in jail for a few years,” says Kugelman. “But the challenges are only going to grow because the PTI base will only become more aggrieved.”

Allies of Pakistan’s jailed ex-leader deliver surprise victory in general elections

Independent candidates affiliated with jailed Pakistani political leader Imran Khan’s party won the most National Assembly seats in Pakistan’s general election, delivering a surprise victory in a vote marred by a slow count and rigging allegations.

According to the Election Commission of Pakistan, independent candidates won 98 seats so far, with 22 seats still unclaimed. The majority of the independents are affiliated with Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

The Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz party (PMLN), headed by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, which had been favored to sweep the polls, has so far won the second-most seats with 69. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has the third-most with 51 seats.

None of the three major parties of the country will win the necessary 169 seats to have a majority in parliament and, therefore, will be unable to form government on their own, leaving it unclear who will be picked to be the country’s next prime minister.

In a speech released Friday, an AI-generated version of Khan claimed victory in the election and called on his supporters to “now show the strength of protecting your vote.”

Khan, who has been behind bars since August, has been using AI to get messages out to supporters. “You kept my trust, and your massive turnout has stunned everyone,” the AI voice said in the video.

Khan’s opponent, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, claimed that his PMLN party had emerged with the largest share. He admitted that his party did not have the “majority to form a government” and was looking for coalition partners.

Sharif, who once saw one of his terms end in a military coup, is considered by analysts to be favored by the country’s military establishment. The military has previously denied backing Sharif.

Speaking on Saturday, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Syed Asim Munir said: “The nation needs stable hands and a healing touch to move on from the politics of anarchy and polarization which does not suit a progressive country of 250 million people.”

“Pakistan’s diverse polity and pluralism will be well-represented by a unified government of all democratic forces imbibed with national purpose,” Munir added.

A senior leader of the PTI party has called on party workers and supporters to hold a protest on Sunday outside polling offices in constituencies where he says election results were being “withheld and delayed.”

Barrister Gohar Ali Khan said the protests were being called at the direction of Imran Khan. Gohar added that the protest would be peaceful, urging supporters to protest “according to the law,” adding that it was their constitutional right.

Violent protests had already broken out on Friday over allegations of vote rigging and the slow vote count, amid warnings from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan that the “lack of transparency” surrounding the delay in announcing the election results was “deeply concerning.”

At least two people were killed and 24 injured in Shangla in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during a confrontation between workers from Khan’s political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and police officers.

A police officer in Shangla told CNN that two protesters had died when they were hit by stones thrown by their group at police. However the PTI-affiliated local candidate, Syed Fareen, told CNN that they were having a peaceful demonstration when the police fired on the protesters, killing the two workers and injuring at least 24.

‘Indicative of tampering’

Analysts attribute the widespread anger to efforts by the country’s caretaker government and its powerful military, a force that has long-dominated Pakistani politics, to suppress Khan and his supporters, including through “pre-poll rigging.”

Khan has accused the military of orchestrating his removal from office in 2022, which saw thousands of his supporters throng the streets after that episode in defiance of the army. Both the military and Pakistan’s caretaker government have denied suppressing Khan or the PTI.

“This election was, among other things, a referendum on the military’s dominant role in Pakistani politics,” Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, a think tank, told CNN. “PTI voters came out in droves to telegraph a message of defiance, that they weren’t going to let the military dictate the outcome of an election that it badly wanted them to lose.”

Khan-backed candidate Meher Bano Qureshi, whose father is the jailed former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, told CNN she had been leading with a significant margin until the election commission “froze” results overnight and denied her access to the returning officer’s office.

It was then announced Friday that she had lost in the Punjab constituency of Multan with what she said was a “historic” number of rejected votes, adding that this was “in my opinion, clearly indicative of tampering.”

Foreign governments have expressed concerns about interference in Pakistan’s election. On Friday, the US called for an investigation into “claims of interference or fraud” surrounding the vote, with a State Department spokesman agreeing with assessments that the elections “included undue restrictions on freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly.”

But Pakistan’s foreign ministry hit back on Saturday, saying that criticisms from overseas “ignore the undeniable fact that Pakistan has held general elections, peacefully and successfully.”

These comments “neither take into account the complexity of the electoral process, nor acknowledge the free and enthusiastic exercise of the right to vote by tens of millions of Pakistanis,” it added, calling those concerns “misplaced.”

Thursday’s vote, already delayed for months, comes as the country of 220 million faces mounting challenges – from economic uncertainty and frequent militant attacks, to climate catastrophes that are putting its most vulnerable at risk.

Former cricket star Khan, 71, who was ousted from power in a storm of controversy, remains imprisoned on multiple convictions and banned from contesting the vote against his rivals. The PTI has been prohibited from using its famous cricket bat symbol on ballots, dealing a blow to millions of illiterate people who might use it to cast their vote, and television stations are banned from running Khan’s speeches.

His longtime foe, 74-year-old Sharif, a scion of the elite Sharif political dynasty, is seeking to make what would be a remarkable political comeback following years of self-exile overseas after he was sentenced to prison on corruption charges.

Even if PTI does come out on top after the vote count is finalized, holding on to power in a new government could prove challenging.

Court rulings ahead of the election had forced the party’s candidates to run as independents. “This means that PTI has to worry that some of its sponsored candidates could align with other parties. And the military will likely pressure them to do so,” Kugelman said.

Sharif’s PMLN may also be able to form a coalition with other parties and shut out the PTI, Kugelman added.

If Sharif’s party forms the new government he would become prime minister for a historic fourth term. He took a conciliatory tone on Friday and stated that “all parties should sit together to heal a wounded Pakistan.”

He also stated that his party respected the mandate of all parties, “including independents,” referring to the candidates from jailed former Prime Minister Khan’s party, who had been unable to run under their party name.

Sharif stressed that his party “did not want to fight” as “Pakistan could not afford conflict.” He also said his party “wanted to improve relations” with Pakistan’s neighbors.

Also standing is Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the 35-year-old son of slain former leader Benazir Bhutto, hoping to reestablish his Pakistan People’s Party as a major political force.