Imran Khan: Has the disqualification case made him more dangerous?

Imran Khan: Has the disqualification case made him more dangerous?

Imran Khan was barred from holding public office for five years on October 21 by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), who found him guilty of corrupt behaviour. This was a dramatic but not unexpected development in Islamabad. Aggressive and occasionally violent protests by Khan’s followers have also broken out around the nation in response to the ruling.

While this may appear to be a severe and absolutely damning judgement for the former prime minister, a closer examination of the facts and how comparable cases in the past have ended suggests that this may not only be a significant setback for him. This is why.
Nawaz Sharif did not have access to an appeals process after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of disqualifying him in 2017. The Islamabad High Court and the Supreme Court of Pakistan remain Khan’s two courts of appeal.

Additionally, both courts have a history of being lenient toward Khan and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Additionally, unlike Sharif’s permanent disqualification, Khan’s is only for a five-year period, and even that is in a very questionable and “poor judgement.”

According to one reading of Article 63-1(p) of the Constitution, which has been cited by the decision, the ECP was simply required to determine whether Khan’s acts qualified as corrupt practices. If found guilty, he would have been prevented from holding public office through a separate legal process.
But there is also a compelling case against it. Many legal professionals believe that after the guilt under Article 63-1(p) has already been shown, further action for disqualification would be unnecessary and a waste of the court’s time.

Regardless of what the judiciary ultimately determines, the following facts remain:

There is minimal likelihood that this disqualification would remain in effect after the appeal Depending on how Khan’s legal representatives prepare for his defence, even if it is upheld, it might only apply to the current term, which ends in less than a year.

In either case, Khan and his party will utilise this decision to raise the stakes and step up their defamatory attacks on General Qamar Javed Bajwa, the departing army chief. Khan has been dividing the military establishment against the Army chief by accusing him of being involved in Bajwa’s hasty resignation as prime minister on April 10.

Khan has been working hard over the past few weeks to exert pressure on the military to tip the scales in his favour, enable a snap election, and, most importantly, appoint the new Army commander of his choice.
As part of his plan, Khan has been using euphemisms to sometimes hint at his criticism of the military, while his party officials have gone on to specifically identify Gen. Bajwa in their public criticism. For instance, PTI supporters were overheard publicly insulting him just after the judgement.

Additionally, this fits into PTI’s well-established plan to exert pressure on institutions through verbal abuse and public intimidation in order to achieve the desired result. Khan has been using it against the ECP for quite some time in anticipation of this ruling after successfully practising it with higher courts and afterwards with the military establishment.

Even after winning the majority of these seats in the most recent by-elections, he continued to criticise the ECP, referring to the chief election commissioner (CEC) as “Nawaz Sharif ka naukar” and implying that the CEC supported his main political competitor, former Prime Minister Sharif. And soon after the decision, his party leaders started speaking ill of the ECP and the CEC in interviews with the media.

The decision will consequently provide gasoline to PTI’s poisonous narrative that they are the constant victims of a sophisticated scheme by the West to keep him out of power. Khan also gets a great chance to escalate his conflict with anyone who isn’t on his side.

Don’t be fooled; Imran Khan is far from out of the running. He doesn’t even take a little break. It might even serve as a political catalyst in the grand scheme of things. Violence is not one of his nightmares, but if it is followed by more, more severe measures against him and/or his party, things might become ugly. It may very well be one of the choices that he is genuinely considering in order to further his eventual goal.