ISLAMABAD: A day after former Prime Minister Imran Khan was convicted and arrested in a case involving the sale of state gifts, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party managed to win a local government by-election in Pakistan’s northwestern Peshawar city by a huge margin.
A local Islamabad court on Saturday sentenced Khan, who was ousted in a parliamentary no-trust vote last year, to three years imprisonment in the case, which has come to be popularly known as the Toshakhana (state repository) case.
Polling for two vacant seats for the Tehsil chairman in Peshawar’s Mathra and Havelian Abbottabad was held in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province on Sunday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PTI’s candidate Inamullah emerged as the victor on the Mathra Tehsil chairman seat, beating his rival Rafiullah of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl) JUI-F by a lead of over 7,000 votes.
“PTI’s sweeping victory at the Mathra Mayoral Election in Peshawar today only further solidifies the truth: the people of Pakistan stand with @ImranKhanPTI,” PTI’s Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi wrote on Twitter.
Critics say efforts to put Khan behind bars are politically motivated and have intensified ahead of elections due to be held later this year. Khan’s popularity and a large support base pose a threat to the ruling coalition and its backers in Pakistan’s powerful military that has held sway over the country’s politics since independence from Britain in 1947.
According to unofficial results by the returning officer (RO), Inamullah secured 20,333 votes while Rafiullah bagged 13,564 votes. Jamaat-e-Islami’s Iftikhar Ahmad got the third-highest votes, bagging 9,546 votes.
