Pakistan: Imran Khan's party PTI claims exclusion from polls

Following the closing of nominations on Sunday, party leaders said that the majority of Imran Khan’s followers, the imprisoned former prime minister of Pakistan, had been disqualified from running for office in the election scheduled for February 8.
Since August, Mr. Khan has been detained and is awaiting trial in connection with numerous cases that he claims were set up to keep him from running for office as the leader of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

The former cricket great was convicted guilty of graft earlier this year; however, the judgement is being reviewed and a court suspended his three-year term. Despite the fact that the conviction banned him from office, PTI submitted Khan’s candidature papers to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) last week.

PTI’s allegation that it is already being excluded from the voting process is probably going to spark numerous applications to the ECP and other courts.

“We will stay in the elections and will file appeals against all these decisions in each of the constituencies and will use all our constitutional, legal and political options,” PTI spokesman Hasan said.

After a falling out with Pakistan’s influential military commanders who had supported Imran Khan’s ascent to power in 2018, the 71-year-old was removed from office last year. He spearheaded an unparalleled campaign of resistance in opposition to the military establishment, which has dominated the country directly for the majority of its existence.

Imran Khan claimed they had orchestrated a scheme to have him wounded in an assassination attempt and that they had engineered his ouster from power through a no-confidence vote supported by the US. Leading PTI figures have been incarcerated or forced to leave the party as a result of a broad crackdown that began after his brief arrest in May caused unrest.

(With agency inputs)