Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) unanimous ruling saying that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) received illegal funding from abroad is a damning indictment of the party’s hypocrisy. After his ouster, Imran Khan has been trying to stay relevant with allegations of a “foreign conspiracy”, which according to him was hatched with the support of his opponents who had introduced a no-confidence vote against him.
The PTI’s entire narrative to salvage its relevance and win back supporters who were dejected by the previous government’s disastrous performance centred around accusations of “treason” against the current government which the PTI terms “imported”.
Even before the no-confidence saga, PTI had been accusing its critics of receiving foreign funding. Under the PTI, journalists who dared to challenge the regime were declared agents of CIA and RAW by government-funded troll armies on social media. Organised campaigns were launched to level such allegations not just against journalists critical of the then ruling party but also to target activists who highlighted the government’s failures. It is a bitter irony that a party whose leaders liberally used “foreign funding” allegations to malign its critics had itself been receiving illegal funding from abroad.
Imran Khan’s act of illegally hiding accounts and filing false declarations means he can be disqualified under Article 62/63 of the Constitution of Pakistan that requires one to be ‘sadiq’ and ‘ameen’ (honest and truthful). Although this provision of the Constitution is controversial and too vague to be fairly implemented, its selective application would strengthen the impression that Imran Khan is unduly favoured by the institutions.
Former prime minister and Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) supreme leader Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by the Supreme Court in 2017 under the same part of the Constitution over undeclared iqama. Therefore, if Imran Khan does not face consequences for misleading the nation about the source of his party’s funding, it would mean that there is one law for him and another for other politicians.
Expecting that the ECP would expose the truth about his party, Imran Khan had recently sought the chief election commissioner’s resignation many times, following which PTI’s social media team had initiated smear campaigns against him.
Just a few days before the verdict, Imran Khan had called on his party’s workers to hold a demonstration outside the ECP office in Islamabad. Even after his surprising landslide victory in the recently held by-elections in Punjab, Imran continued attacking the ECP and accused it of bias. It is now clear that his criticism of the election watchdog was an attempt to discredit it ahead of the prohibited funding verdict against the party.
Meanwhile, PTI spokespersons are trying to justify their party’s misrepresentation of facts, with former minister Fawad Chaudhry saying that Imran Khan was unaware of the undeclared accounts. The PTI cannot put a reasonable defence, and is likely to further censure the ECP in hopes of threatening the institutions into submission.
Observers also indicate that the Supreme Court is likely to grant PTI relief if it hears the case, as the top court’s controversial three-member bench is known to issue evidently pro-PTI judgments — to the extent that the judges backtracked from their own earlier orders when it suited the party.
The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government that has been discredited by the PTI through the party’s slogans against “treason” and “foreign conspiracy” now has an opportunity to counter Imran Khan’s hateful rhetoric by highlighting his hypocrisy in accepting and hiding prohibited foreign funding — all the while accusing them of being foreign agents.
The coalition government had been losing the war of narratives as Imran Khan’s populist rhetoric based on lies about a “foreign conspiracy” appeared to have been well-received among the public. PML-N and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) have been unprepared to fight on the narrative front as they had let Imran Khan’s dangerous narrative go unchallenged. The results of the Punjab by-election proved that populism works, especially when there is no one to challenge it.
With the ECP verdict, the PDM parties now have an opportunity to challenge the PTI’s narrative that had created an increased sense of polarisation in the country. The public needs to be told that a party that created an ‘us vs them’ environment, pitted the citizenry against each other and termed all its opponents “traitors” has itself been dishonest to the nation.
