ISLAMABAD, Aug 20 (AFP) - Pakistan Friday formally declared Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz the winner of two by-elections held to clear his path to the prime ministership.
The head of the state-run election commission Irshad Hasan Khan announced the final results of Wednesday's polling in the constituencies of Attock and Tharparkar, confirming Aziz' resounding victory.
Following the official announcement, Aziz was sworn in as a member of the national assembly by Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain at the evening sitting of the 342-member lower house.
In Attock, a fertile farming region in northwest of Punjab province, Aziz obtained 76,156 votes against his chief rival Sikandar Hayat of former premier Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), who secured 29,497 votes.
In Tharparkar, a desert seat in southern Sindh province, Aziz bagged 153,485 votes against his PPP rival's tally of 10,732 votes, Khan said.
Khan rejected claims by opposition parties and human rights groups that state apparatus was used by the government to rig the elections.
"The election commission acted with neutrality, objectivity, transparency and independence at every stage of the electoral process," he told a press conference.
Aziz's election campaign was plagued by an Al-Qaeda-linked attempt to assassinate him on July 30 and the killing of three PPP activists on Monday in Attock.
Aziz will be sworn in as prime minister next week.
He is a former Citibank executive and a respected technocrat with no political party affiliation. He has been a close ally of Musharraf since the army chief staged a bloodless coup in October 1999.