By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The main opposition party, led by jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, said on Thursday it had filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking its intervention to ensure it could contest the upcoming national elections.
The move came after the Islamabad High Court dismissed Khan’s plea to suspend a trial court verdict that found him guilty of corrupt practices and disqualified him from holding public office for five years.
The court’s decision is a fresh setback for Khan, who has been in prison since August and whose participation in the Feb. 8 general elections is now uncertain.
Khan, who was prime minister from 2018 to 2022, denies any wrongdoing and says the charges are politically motivated to keep him and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party from contesting the polls.
He also accuses the military, which has ruled Pakistan for nearly half of its history, of having a hand in the crackdown against his party. The military strongly denies the allegations.
“PTI has filed a petition in the Supreme Court requesting intervention to ensure no tactics should be employed stopping PTI from contesting election,” the party said in a statement.
It said its candidates were facing arrests, raids, and harassment by the police and the election commission and were unable to submit their nomination papers.
Senior PTI leader and Khan’s lawyer, Latif Khosa, said the party would challenge the high court verdict in the top court and seek its nullification.
He said the trial court’s conviction of Khan was “void” and “jurisdictionally incompetent” and that the high court had ignored the facts and evidence presented by the defence.
“Imran Khan’s basic rights are not being granted,” Khosa told reporters. “The high court chief justice is biased against the PTI leadership.”
He said trying to keep a big party out of the elections could not ensure the credibility and transparency of the democratic process.
Khan, a former cricket star who led Pakistan to its only World Cup victory in 1992, was convicted in August for failing to disclose assets earned from the sale of state gifts while he was prime minister.
He challenged his conviction in the high court, which suspended his three-year sentence and granted him bail in August. However, his conviction has not been set aside so far, making him ineligible for any public office.
On Thursday, chief justice Amir Farooq and justice Tariq Mahmour Jahangiri dismissed Khan’s plea to suspend the trial court’s verdict, deeming it inadmissible due to the absence of a specific request for suspending his conviction, in a nine-page detailed verdict.
“In the instant case, no specific plea was raised, and subsequent application has been made to cover up the omission. Even no extraordinary or exceptional circumstances were mentioned in the earlier application though they existed in the form of the notification dated 08.08.2023 when the application for suspension of the sentence was filed.” “Bare reading of the application for suspension filed by the appellant shows that it was for suspension of the sentence only.”
It said Khan had invoked a specific provision in his petition but did not “specifically pray in the same for suspension of the conviction”.
The dismissal of the plea comes at a crucial juncture as Khan’s party announced that he would contest the elections from three constituencies, which may not be possible until his conviction by the trial court is either suspended or overturned by the high court.
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