A letter signed by 130 activists, lawyers, and journalists was submitted to the Commonwealth Secretariat on Thursday, expressing concern over the release of a Commonwealth Observer Group’s (COG) report on the 2024 General Elections after a 19-month delay.

The COG report, released earlier this week, cited “restrictions that curtailed fundamental political rights and hindered one party’s ability to contest fairly”. It also flagged the election-night suspension of cellular services, which undermined transparency and delayed results.

The letter, which has been shared by some of the signatories on social media, expressed grave concern over the “extraordinary” delay in the report’s publication, noting that election reports are published routinely without any delay.

“We are not aware that any other COG report has been published 10 months after transmittal of the final report to the Secretariat by the relevant observer group,” the letter read.

The letter noted that in 2013, the general election report was published on June 19 — only 39 days after polling — while in 2018, the report was published within the same year.

“More recent reports for other countries were all published earlier, despite Pakistan’s election having taken place prior,” the letter added. “These include Sri Lanka (published December 2024), Ghana (published March 2025), and Trinidad and Tobago (published July 2025).

“We note that the official report has only now been published by the Commonwealth Secretariat on September 30, following the publication of a leaked copy of the report by an independent news platform, Dropsite News on September 13.”

The reports were both submitted to the secretariat on November 20, 2024, and were signed by all fifteen members of the COG, indicating that the report was finalised and transmitted but was “withheld from the public for 10 months for reasons that require explanation”.

The letter further noted that withholding the report violated Section 6.3 (the Chair will issue a preliminary statement within 48 hours after polling) of the Revised Commonwealth Guidelines and Section 6.7 (final report) of the Commonwealth Handbook on Election Observation. According to these regulations, election reports “shall be issued in a timely manner … and then made public”.

Moreover, on September 14, the Commonwealth issued a statement acknowledging that the letter had been shared with the federal government and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

“This damning admission that the report was shared with the perpetrators of election fraud but withheld from the victims of that fraud — Pakistani voters, opposition parties and civil society — constitutes a betrayal of the Commonwealth Charter’s commitments to democracy and human rights, and undermines the credibility of election observation itself,” the letter stated.

“The report confirmed that ‘decisions by key institutions consistently limited the ability of one particular party to contest the elections. Ultimately, these decisions impinged on the credibility, transparency and inclusiveness of the electoral process,’” the letter read.

Other “worrying observations” made by the signatories included restrictions on fundamental political rights, such as freedom of association; reduced transparency in the electoral process due to telecommunications blackouts; discrepancies in polling results; limiting journalistic freedoms; and the mass arrests of PTI members.

Additionally, the report noted the COG was “immensely concerned by allegations [of judicial interference] and by the possibility that such interference may have occurred in relation to election-related court cases”.

“The foremost duty of the Commonwealth Secretariat in this matter is to uphold the democratic rights of the people of its member state the people of Pakistan,” the letter read.

“Instead, the secretariat has harmed democratic accountability and denied millions of Pakistani citizens the opportunity to seek redress for violations of their democratic rights by withholding the election report for 19 months.”

The letter urged the Commonwealth Secretariat to take the following measures:

• Commission an independent inquiry into the 19-month delay in publishing the report
• Adopt a policy to automatically publish observer reports within a fixed timeframe
• Refer this issue to the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group and place it on the agenda at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
• Issue an unequivocal apology to the people of Pakistan for “failing them at a critical moment in their history”

In September, the PTI had called on the COG to release this report, claiming that it laid bare “systemic rigging, institutional bias, and deliberate targeting of PTI and its founder, Imran Khan”.

However, in a statement issued on September 14, the COG said it was aware that a version of its report on the 2024 Pakistan general elections was circulating online, but that they did not comment on leaked documents as a matter of policy.

“The government and the Election Commission of Pakis­tan have already received the report. The full report, as we had communicated earlier, will be released later this month, along with a number of COG reports currently in the publication pipeline,” the COG statement said.