Islamabad, Pakistan — The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party of jailed ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan is planning to legally challenge the federal government’s Sunday takeover of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province that the party governed. Sheikh Waqas Akram, the PTI’s central information secretary, told Al Jazeera that the party would challenge the imposition of emergency laws — suspending civil liberties — and governor’s rule in the province in court on Tuesday. A petition had been drafted by a legal committee headed by PTI secretary general Salman Akram Raja, but Akram did not say whether it would be filed in the Supreme Court or the Federal Constitutional Court.
The federal government’s moves have emerged as Pakistan’s latest political flashpoint, with competing narratives from the government and the PTI, at a time when the party was in the middle of a delayed march towards Islamabad, aimed at pressuring authorities to release former PM Khan, who has been in incarceration for more than three years. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi on Monday justified the government’s moves by arguing that federal rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was needed for Pakistan to effectively combat “terrorism” in the province that shares a porous border with Afghanistan. On Sunday, President Asif Ali Zardari imposed emergency rule and governor’s rule, suspending the PTI government in the northwestern province.
The party has governed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since 2013. Sohail Afridi, the suspended chief minister, and some members of his cabinet have been taken into preventive custody, Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry confirmed on Monday. Afridi had been leading the march towards Islamabad seeking to free Khan, and despite the setbacks to the party, PTI leaders said the protest was still on.
But a historic crackdown against the party has begun,” Akram said. According to the proclamation signed on Sunday, the provincial government had “failed to demonstrate the ownership, will and intent to adequately deal with the menace of terrorism”. That’s the constitutional premise needed for imposition of emergency,” Aasiya Riaz, joint director of the independent political think-tank the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), told Al Jazeera.
However Hassan Abdullah Niazi, an adjunct faculty member at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and a lawyer based in Lahore, disputed that premise. It had a functioning legislature and executive that commanded the confidence of the people, hence this entire exercise is an unconstitutional move against provincial autonomy,” he told Al Jazeera. A more detailed case was set out last month in a 14-page white paper presented in Islamabad by Ikhtiar Wali Khan, a political advisor to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN).
The paper pointed to rising police deaths, staff and equipment shortages in the provincial counterterrorism department, and spending priorities. However, Akram rejected the charge that the PTI had failed to lead the fight. He said the provincial government had paid 1.83 billion rupees ($6.6 million) from its own funds to the families of more than 900 soldiers, police and paramilitary personnel killed fighting armed groups, a contribution he said no other province had made.
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