Pakistan’s Supreme Court judges banned imprisoned ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan’s PTI party from using its party symbol on the ballot papers. The party’s symbol is a cricket bat. Hundreds of PTI politicians now have to run as independent candidates.
Not everyone can read
This means that the more than 100 million eligible voters in the populous South Asian country will find it difficult to find their favorites in the election on February 8th. Reason: The majority of constituencies are in rural areas. The literacy rate there is often low.
PTI party members condemned the court’s decision to ban party symbols. A close confidant of the former prime minister even spoke of “sham elections” in the Asian country. “It is difficult to overstate the importance of electoral symbols in Pakistan and the challenge this poses to the PTI,” he stressed. Pakistan expert Madiha Afzal wrote on
Khan is in prison
Pakistan’s opposition has already been massively weakened following the conviction and imprisonment of the popular Imran Khan. Activists have been warning for weeks about unfree elections in the country, which is officially a nuclear power. Since the state was founded in 1947, there has been repeated unrest and instability in the South Asian country, which lies between India and Afghanistan. For more than half of this time, the military ruled the country with around 240 million inhabitants.
Protests against the arrest of Imran Khan in the port city of Karachi (archive image)Image: Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images
Opposition leader Imran Khan, who is currently in prison, was elected prime minister in 2018 and ousted in a vote of no confidence in 2022. During his time in office, his relationship with the powerful military had deteriorated. Khan has repeatedly said the army wants to prevent his return to power. Khan is very well known in Pakistan: he was once successful in cricket, Pakistan’s national sport.
haz/kle (dpa, afp, rtr)