Even after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced its verdict in the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) prohibited funding case on Tuesday, the party isn’t willing to adopt a defensive policy.
The party has rejected the decision of the ECP in which the commission announced that the PTI was involved in getting prohibited funding from outside the country. Both the national and provincial leadership of the party rejected the ECP’s findings while also vowing to challenge the decision.
From Shah Mehmood Qureshi to Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, the entire leadership is still in an aggressive mood. Right after the verdict was announced, PTI Chairman Imran Khan chaired a party meeting at Bani Gala where he directed party leaders not to adopt a defensive approach against the ECP.
The party believes that the findings of the ECP are biased and it will be challenged in the Supreme Court soon. Qureshi also demanded that the ECP should also seek details of funding of other parties to show its neutrality. Fawad took to his Twitter to pay his gratitude to overseas Pakistanis while requesting them to keep sending their money to the party. “They are patriotic Pakistanis and not the agents of US and Israel,” he said.
It is pertinent to mention here that the PTI has been mounting pressure on the ECP for the last many days ahead of the verdict in the prohibited funding case. It managed to get passed resolutions from the Punjab Assembly and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly, demanding the resignations of the chief election commissioner (CEC) and other ECP members.
According to some observers, the ECP succumbed to PTI’s pressure and, therefore, didn’t give a verdict that could lead to Imran Khan’s disqualification. It should be noted here that the PTI had also staged demonstrations outside the offices of the ECP in Islamabad and Punjab demanding the CEC’s resignation.
Talking to Minute Mirror, PTI’s provincial information secretary Andleeb Abbas said, “Our point of view was proven correct today as it has been established that it was prohibited funding and not foreign funding.”
She added that the accounts of other parties, including PPP, PML-N and JUI-F should be scrutinized. “It is a defeat for the PDM and they should all show their accounts now,” she said, adding that they don’t have proof of their transactions. “It is on record that Benazir Bhutto had said that Nawaz Sharif took money from Osama Bin Ladan to run his election campaign,” she said. “We’ll move courts if the ECP doesn’t start scrutiny of other political parties,” she said. PTI central Punjab President Dr. Yasmin Rashid said that the party received funds from overseas Pakistanis through legal means. “The ECP is completely biased and it has become a subordinate wing of PDM,” she added.
