A week after losing the election symbol, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Barrister Gohar Ali Khan said on Thursday that his party would begin its election campaign on January 20 (Saturday).
Expressing his views about his party’s participation in the upcoming elections, Khan said, “We will run the election campaign across the country. The final list of the candidates will be uploaded today.”
Commenting on the tense relations between Iran and Pakistan, Khan said, “The tension should not escalate with Iran. The entire nation is standing by the Pakistan Army.”
Earlier this week, Gohar ruled out the possibility of a ban on the PTI after Supreme Court’s verdict that upheld the Dec 22 decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to deprive the PTI of its iconic ‘bat’ symbol.
Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa-led three-member bench announced the verdict, dealing a huge blow to Imran Khan-led PTI’s hopes of retaining its election symbol.
As a result, the PTI candidates will now be contesting the elections independently with different electoral symbols while the party no longer has the right to reserved seats for women and minorities.
Speaking at to a news channel, the senior lawyer said that now the PTI has been stripped of its iconic symbol, it doesn’t mean that the party has been dissolved, reiterating it will file a review petition in the Supreme Court against its verdict.
Gohar noted that the PTI would not hold intra-party elections immediately; it will first file a review appeal in the Supreme Court. Moreover, he said, they will not object to changing the bench of the Supreme Court or to the chief justice.
He said that PTI’s intra-party elections were in accordance with the Constitution and were conducted in a ‘transparent manner’.
The PTI leader pointed out that they did not criticise or express distrust in anyone in the judiciary. “We do not attack judges or conduct campaigns against them,” he said, citing example of PML-N senior vice president Maryam Nawaz and JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman.
