Pakistan General Election, 8 February 2024: Report of the Commonwealth Observer Group

The final report of the 13-member Commonwealth Observer Group chaired by former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, transmitted to the Commonwealth Secretary-General on 20 November 2024 and published on 30 September 2025. It concludes that the shutdown of the cellular network on election day was responsible for the failure of the Election Commission's Election Management System, forced manual transmission of results, 'significantly reduced transparency' and 'expanded opportunities for the manipulation of Forms 45, 46 and 47'. It records documentation indicating that copies of Form 45 held by party agents differed from those used in tabulation, notes polling stations with unfeasibly high turnout, and finds much of the analysis conducted by civil society organisations — it names PILDAT, FAFEN and Pattan-Coalition 38 — to be credible, while adding that it 'cannot establish whether these clerical irregularities owed to mistakes or malevolence'. Its conclusion is that a series of institutional decisions — the bat symbol, the Supreme Court's reversal of the lifetime ban, arrests of opposition members, the cellular shutdown and media-regulator directives — 'consistently limited the ability of one particular party to contest the elections' and that 'these decisions impinged on the credibility, transparency and inclusiveness of the electoral process'. It also commends the Commission, the security services and polling staff for administering a single-day election of 128 million voters, and records that the voter registration gender gap was narrowed to 7.7 per cent.