ISLAMABAD: A day after Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) swept by-elections in Punjab, and is likely to form the new government there on July 22, the prime minister told the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) that the timing was ripe to announce the “long-delayed” verdict in a 2014 funding case against the party of his chief rival and predecessor Imran Khan.
Filed in November of that year by Akbar S. Babar, a founding member of the party, the complaint has come to be called the prohibited funding case which pertains to allegations the party received funds from dubious, prohibited, illegal and undeclared sources.
In 2017, Supreme Court ruled that political parties could not receive funds from foreign companies. Since 2014, the commission and its scrutiny committee have heard the case over 150 times, with PTI seeking adjournment on some 54 occasions.
“For long has Imran Niazi [sic] been given a free pass despite his repeated [and] shameless attacks on state institutions,” Shehbaz Sharif, increasingly cornered in his own party which he heads after the dismal results of the by-poll, declared.
I urge the Election Commission of Pakistan to announce long-delayed judgment on PTI foreign funding case. For long has Imran Niazi been given a free pass despite his repeated & shameless attacks on state institutions. Impunity given to him has hurt the country.
— Shehbaz Sharif (@CMShehbaz) July 19, 2022
“Impunity given to him [Imran] has hurt the country,” he said.
Pakistan has some of the strictest laws against the foreign funding of political parties. The Elections Act, 2017, prohibits not only “… any aid, financial or otherwise, from any foreign government or political party of a foreign country …” but also “… any portion of its funds from foreign nationals.”
Besides a very strict definition of a “Foreign-Aided Political Party”, the law prescribes a very severe penalty for a party which is found to be foreign-aided by the ECP and so upheld by the Supreme Court.
Such a party, according to Elections Act, 2017, shall stand dissolved and all its elected members in the national and provincial assemblies and even local governments shall be disqualified from holding their membership.
Also, the head of the party or their designated party official has to certify the statement of accounts to be accurate and that no funds were received by the party from any source prohibited under the law. This certificate alone can lead to serious consequences for the party head if the information contained in the statement of accounts is not accurate.
The tweet comes a day after Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) vice president Maryam Nawaz made a similar demand to the electoral agency.
