Gohar Ali Khan elected unopposed as new chairman of ex-Pak PM Imran Khan's party

Islamabad, Dec 2 (PTI) Jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s party on Saturday elected Barrister Gohar Ali Khan as the new chairman, days before the top election body’s deadline for the party to hold organisational polls to retain 'bat' as its election symbol.

This is the first time since the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) was founded in 1996 by the cricketer-turned-politician that someone else has replaced the 71-year-old as its chairman.

Soft-spoken Gohar, a lawyer by profession and someone who has been appearing in several cases against Imran Khan and the PTI was elected unopposed as nobody filed a nomination against him in the intra-party elections held in the north-western city of Peshawar, considered a stronghold of the party.

Gohar, 45, was hand-picked by incarnated Khan after consultation with his loyalist lawyers who frequently meet him in jail where he has been kept since being arrested on August 5 after conviction in the Toshakhana case. Khan himself avoided filing the nomination due to conviction and disqualification.

The organisational elections were necessitated on the directives of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) that had given a 20-day time frame to the PTI on November 23 to retain the ‘bat’ as its electoral symbol, ahead of general elections scheduled to be held on February 8.

Political observers considered the move to launch Gohar, a relatively unfamiliar face in the political arena, as most astonishing, especially when the party needed a strong experienced hand to steer it safely through the rough waters in the absence of Khan.

However, the fact that he is just a stop-gap arrangement and was appointed as chairman to avoid legal complications would remain his main vulnerability. It means that for every key decision, he would look up to Khan for approval.

According to his website, Gohar Khan is an advocate of the Supreme Court and appears in all High Courts. He is a law graduate from Wolverhampton University, UK with LL.M from Washington School of Law, USA.

Gohar had once followed the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and contested the election from its platform in 2008, which he lost. After the setback, he moved away from politics and concentrated on his practice as a lawyer. He was associated with the chamber of Aitizaz Ahsan, who is a leading lawyer and leader of the PPP.

An ethnic Pashtun, the new PTI chief hails from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and his nomination is being looked at as an effort to keep the Pashtun support base of the party intact. A reason why the intra-party elections were held in Peshawar instead of the usual Lahore or Islamabad as chosen venues for such activities.

Speaking with journalists at Peshawar after his election, Gohar said he would try to fulfil his responsibility as Khan’s representative. “When elections take place, we will defeat everyone,” Gohar said.

He also criticised the ECP by saying that at least 175 political parties functioning in the country have been providing details of their intra-party polls since 1960. “However, none of these polls have been scrutinised as closely as those of the PTI.” Meanwhile, PTI also elected unopposed Omer Ayub Khan as its secretary-general. Also, Munir Ahmed Baloch was elected as the party president of Balochistan; Haleem Adil Sheikh of Sindh; Ali Amin Gandapur of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Dr Yasmin Rashid as the party’s Punjab president.

Gohar’s election, even when unopposed, did not happen without friction and indicated that he would have to deal with old party leaders who were overlooked for the key post.

Akbar S. Babar, one of the founding members of PTI, had rejected his candidature calling it “selection instead of an election”. He said that Gohar’s nomination had raised serious questions about the transparency and credibility of the entire PTI intra-party elections.

Similarly, Gohar would have to deal with tough political opponents, especially, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), whose spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb reacting to his election said it was a selection, not an election. “Once again, the PTI has been involved in a selection all in 15 minutes,” she said.

Soon after, PTI’s official X handle tweeted in Urdu, which loosely translated reads as: “With what mouth those who came to power through behind-the-scenes agreements and secret deals are talking about the transparency of elections.” “History is a witness that PML-N, the pioneer of hereditary politics, never let the Sharif family go out from the central positions of the party to the ministries,” it added.

With the general elections little more than two months away, political parties in Pakistan have upped their games with campaigns across the country. Imran Khan and his party have maintained that the ECP’s action was an attempt to keep them away from the polls, and yet another example of not offering a level playing field. PTI

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