Accepting Gohar as PTI chairman: Akbar S Babar to challenge SC order

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founding member Akbar S Babar announced on Sunday that he would challenge the order of 8 Supreme Court judges to accept Gohar Ali Khan as PTI chairman and the certificates issued by him to ECP.

In a video statement, he termed it ‘illegally installing’ someone as party chairman without having conducted the lawful intra-party elections.

Babar wondered how the Supreme Court could order the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to impose someone as chairman of the PTI ‘while denying us the legal and constitutional right of intra-party elections’.

He questioned as to how the apex court could issue any ruling regarding the intra-party elections when the decision has not yet been made by the ECP. He also asked how hundreds of thousands of PTI members, including himself, could be deprived of their fundamental constitutional right of franchise to elect the leadership of their choice.

Babar said he and other PTI members refused to accept a PTI leadership imposed on them by the 8 Judges of SCP. He added the order of 8 SC judges to ECP was unconstitutional, illegal and undemocratic, which he intends to challenge it.

To substantiate his point, Babar referred to the SCP order of January 13 this year wherein the court said that there was nothing “credible to establish” how Barrister Gohar and Omar Ayub assumed their offices as Chairman and Secretary General of PTI without any credible process.

He pointed out if individuals like Gohar and others had been elected in transparent party elections according to the law, they would have been acceptable to him and others. But he insisted how the workers could accept them when the court decision did not recognise their right of franchise.

Babar asked why the protectors of democracy are not safeguarding the fundamental democratic right of PTI members to elect their leadership of choice while referring to Britain where the longest serving 3-time PM Margaret Thatcher was removed through intra-party elections. “Similarly, a dozen plus British PMs have been replaced through intra-party elections. The institutions are entangled in power struggles, which is leading to the country’s destruction,” he regretted. He warned if any unconstitutional action were to take place in the country, it would be due to PTI’s policy of political turmoil.