Former prime minister Imran Khan remains a hugely popular politician in Pakistan despite being ousted in a no-confidence vote two years ago and facing several charges ranging from corruption to treason.
In February, candidates backed by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, who was forced to run as an independent, won the most seats in Pakistan’s general election, despite facing widespread repression and allegations of vote-rigging by rival candidates.
Days after a Supreme Court ruling gave the PTI legal recognition as a political party and gave it the most seats in Pakistan’s parliament, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government announced it would seek to ban the party altogether.
“We believe there is credible evidence that the PTI should be banned,” Pakistan’s Information Minister Atta Talal told DW, listing several charges against Khan, including leaking state secrets, receiving foreign funding and inciting riots after his exile.
Crackdown on Khan
Pakistan’s ruling coalition, led by Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-North Party (PML-N), is widely seen as having the backing of the country’s military, which analysts say has a long history of meddling in politics.
Khan became prime minister in 2018 but was ousted in 2022 after clashing with Pakistan’s powerful generals.
Protests have raged across the country for weeks since Khan was ousted from power, with some of his supporters clashing with security forces and storming military buildings.
The 71-year-old has been jailed since August 2023 and is banned from running in elections.
Khan’s illegal marriage conviction and seven-year sentence were overturned by an Islamabad court on Saturday, but he has not been released and remains in custody on other charges.
Could banning PTI lead to political instability?
Political analysts have expressed concern that banning the PTI could lead to further political violence and lead to a constitutional crisis in Pakistan.
Political analyst Zahid Hussain told DW that banning the party would be “a catastrophe that could lead to the collapse of the government itself.”
“There have been very few cases of political parties being banned in Pakistan. This decision is likely to create uncertainty and confusion,” he said.
Senior PTI official Hammad Azhar told DW that the move would increase political instability in Pakistan.
“The government is suppressing the will of the people, but that never works in this day and age. It’s an old tactic. It will lead to further destabilization and the Pakistani people are now overwhelmingly convinced that their will is being actively suppressed,” he said.
The PTI will remain popular with voters
Madiha Afzal, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, told DW that efforts to ban the PTI would further undermine the coalition’s legitimacy in the eyes of many Pakistani voters and boost its popularity.
“It is likely to backfire,” Afzal said, adding that it was unclear whether the move to ban the PTI would be successful.
“It goes to court and the judiciary [military] The clash between the regimes has already begun,” she said.
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the PTI is entitled to an extra 20 seats in parliament, increasing pressure on Mr Sharif’s fragile coalition government.
Afzal said the government’s attempt to ban the PTI was “desperate, anti-democratic and destructive.”
“This follows the Supreme Court decision which restored the PTI to the status of a political party and made it the largest party in parliament,” she said.
“I think all sides need to talk and end the politics of revenge and persecution, but that is unlikely. The focus should be on respecting elections, parliament and the mandate of the voters, but the current situation is an authoritarian approach, which is at the opposite end of the spectrum to democracy,” she added.
No sign of reconciliation
Political analyst Hussain said the government’s intention was to keep Khan in prison for a long time and even “impose a state of emergency in the country”.
“Reconciliation has been needed for a long time to fix the political situation in the country but in this situation reconciliation is unlikely to happen and the PTI cannot even hold talks with the government for reconciliation,” he said.
PTI’s Azhar said he believed political reconciliation was not possible under the current government, whose legitimacy was “based on artificial and fabricated authority”.
“We feel that no compromise can be made on the single vote cast by the people of Pakistan,” he said.
“As far as the regime is concerned, we are all open to dialogue, but it will be within the bounds of democracy, the constitution and the rule of law,” he added.
Editor: Wesley Rahn
