Pakistan cricket legend Imran Khan has declared victory in a divisive general election and said he is ready to lead the nation, despite a long delay in ballot counting and allegations of vote rigging from his main opponents.
"God has given me a chance to come to power to implement that ideology which I started 22 years ago," Mr Khan said in a televised speech from his house near the capital Islamabad.
But supporters of jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who accuse Mr Khan of colluding with the army, said the vote count was rigged and called it an assault on democracy in a country that has a history of military rule.
Mr Khan called for "mutually beneficial" ties with Pakistan's on-off ally the United States, and offered an olive branch to arch-enemy India, saying the two nations should resolve the long-simmering dispute over Kashmir.
It is a stunning rise for an anti-corruption crusader who spent much of his political career on the fringes of Pakistani politics.
In a speech peppered with populist pledges, the 65-year-old promised to create jobs for the poor and said he would turn the palatial prime minister's official residence in the capital Islamabad into an education facility instead of living in it.
Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and rival Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) both said their monitors in many voting centres were either kicked out during counting or had not received the official notifications of the precinct's results, but instead got hand-written tallies that they could not verify.
"It is a sheer rigging. The way the people's mandate has blatantly been insulted, it is intolerable," Shehbaz, PML-N president and Nawaz Sharif's brother, told a news conference as the counting continued.
Mr Khan has staunchly denied allegations by PML-N that he is getting help from the military, which has ruled Pakistan for about half of its history and still sets key security and foreign policy.
He has offered to investigate the claims of rigging and said he wants to "unite" the country under his leadership.
Pakistan faces a mounting economic crisis that is likely to require a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the likely conditions of which could complicate Mr Khan's spending pledges.
His Pakistan Movement for Justice party (PTI) has also not ruled out seeking support from China, Pakistan's closest ally, which has in recent years been investing heavily in infrastructure in the country.
