Imran Khan's party elects new chairman ahead of Pakistan's general election
- 02 Dec 2023
Tariq Butt, Correspondent / Reuters
One of ousted Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan's lawyers was elected on Saturday as chairman of his party, allowing it to take part in a national vote scheduled for February as the former cricketer is in jail and barred from taking part.
Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, who was nominated by Imran Khan for the top slot a couple of days ago, submitted his nomination papers for the office of the party’s chairman. Nobody challenged and resultantly, Gohar Ali Khan was elected unopposed.
The central polling centre was set up in Peshawar's Rano Garhi near the Motorway Toll Plaza where its Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Presiding Officer Ali Zaman and party’s chief election commissioner were present.
Zaman said that the number of registered voters for the polls was more than 20 million. "The vote can be cast through an online app and ballot paper at the election centre in Peshawar," he said.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had directed PTI to hold the party poll for a new chairman if it wanted to participate in the election on Feb.8 and retain its bat election symbol.
The PTI will face former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's party as its main opponent. But the barrister chosen on Saturday will not necessarily become the prime minister, should the party win.
Another of Imran Khan's lawyers, barrister Ali Zafar, said that choosing Gohar Ali Khan as replacement was just a babysitting arrangement for the party.
The 71-year-old former cricket star has been embroiled in a tangle of political and legal battles since he was ousted as prime minister in April 2022. He has not been seen in public since he was jailed for three years in August for unlawfully selling state gifts while in office from 2018 to 2022.
Speaking in Peshawar after his election as chairman, Gohar Ali Khan said he will keep fulfilling this responsibility as Imran Khan’s representative. He said that Pakistan has 175 political parties, all of which have been providing details of their intra-party polls to the ECP since 1960. "However, none of these polls have been scrutinised as closely as those of the PTI. People are seeing this and will block the oppression. We have to take the country forward.”
He added that PTI’s purpose is to struggle, and that Imran Khan is in jail because of his efforts. "When parliamentary elections take place, we will defeat everyone,” he said.
Omer Ayub Khan was elected as the party Secretary-General. Munir Ahmed Baloch was elected as the party president of Balochistan; Haleem Adil Sheikh for Sindh; Ali Amin Gandapur for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Dr Yasmin Rashid as president Punjab.
Akbar S. Babar, one of the founding members of PTI, had rejected the nomination of Barrister Gohar Ali Khan as a candidate for the party chairman’s slot, calling it "selection instead of an election”.
Babar, who had filed the foreign funding case against the PTI, told reporters that the nomination of the new PTI chairman has raised serious questions about the transparency and credibility of the entire PTI intra-party election process.
He said that for a party that champions transparency and level playing field in the national elections is shying away from allowing its workers a level playing field to elect its leadership without interference and manipulation.
The ECP had on Nov 23 annulled the PTI’s intra-party polls held in June last year, terming them "highly objectionable”. The order came at a time when general elections are about two months away and political parties are ratcheting up their poll campaigns across the country.
The PTI, however, has complained about an uneven playing field and termed the ECP’s ruling an attempt to keep Imran Khan and his party away from polls.
A PTI leader said that the decision to appoint Gohar Ali Khan, who is an associate of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, was not a wise move due to his proximity to the PPP stalwart.
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