By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The political party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan is facing a leadership crisis and internal divisions as his wife and sisters clash over the choice of an interim party chief and the legal defense of the imprisoned leader.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which came to power in 2018 on a platform of anti-corruption and reform but lost its parliamentary majority in 2022 after a rift with the powerful military establishment, has nominated Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, a newcomer and an associate of a rival party leader, as the caretaker chairman of the party.
The move has angered some loyalists who feel ignored and betrayed by Khan, who is serving a prison sentence on corruption charges.
They have compared Gohar Khan’s nomination to the appointment of Usman Buzdar as the chief minister of Punjab province in 2018, a decision that had drawn widespread criticism for Khan for picking a weak and inexperienced candidate.
A PTI leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told local Dawn newspaper that the decision to appoint Gohar Khan, who is an associate of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Aitzaz Ahsan, was not a wise move due to his proximity to the opposition stalwart.
“Unfortunately, Imran Khan has again done an experiment, just like Usman Buzdar, who left him when his difficult time started. The position of the party chairman is very sensitive, and it could be used against the party,” the leader said.
He also claimed that there was a rift between Bushra Bibi, Khan’s wife, and his sisters, who have been actively involved in his legal and political affairs.
The leader alleged that during her hearing at the jail, Bushra Bibi was heckled by a group of men, and on the next day, a similar treatment was meted out to the sisters of the PTI chairman. “We strongly believe that the ladies were behind those slogans.”
His claims seemed to be corroborated by an alleged audio leak, which surfaced on social media on Thursday. In the purported clip, a voice believed to be of Bushra Bibi tells her lawyer, Latif Khosa, that Imran Khan’s sisters were not happy with her for hiring him.
She also allegedly said that one of the sisters had claimed that Khosa misbehaved with her.
The voice believed to belong to the former first lady also shared that Imran Khan’s sisters were also not happy with her statement in which she expressed apprehension that the PTI chairman could be poisoned in jail.
Khosa, who is a former governor of Punjab and a senior PPP leader, said that he did not misbehave with the sisters and only told them that they should let him fight the case without interference.
Later, Khosa said that those who leaked an audio conversation between a lawyer and his client should be ashamed.
The leaking of audio recordings is unprecedented in Pakistan and officials have not yet commented on who could have recorded or leaked them. Multiple audio clips have hit social media platforms over the past several months in which former prime minister Shehbaz Sharif and Khan as well as senior politicians and judges and their families could be heard discussing official matters with their ministers or close aides.
In one of them, Sharif could be heard discussing with a top bureaucrat how to import industrial machinery from Pakistan’s archrival India for one of the prime minister’s close relatives. In a subsequent audio clip, Maryam Nawaz — Sharif’s niece and vice president of his party — is purportedly requesting her uncle to scrap a public health project launched by his predecessor Khan.
In a leaked audio clip featuring Khan when he was still prime minister, he could be heard telling his chief bureaucrat about a “cypher” or secret diplomatic cable sent to Islamabad by the then-Pakistani ambassador to the United States.
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