ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan on Wednesday urged Pakistan’s legal community to launch a movement to uphold people’s rights, particularly the right to vote amid widespread fears general elections due in January may be delayed.
Pakistani lawyers have launched anti-government protests in the past, most notably in 2007 after former military ruler Pervez Musharraf sacked ex-chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Thousands of lawyers joined by civil society activists, students and politicians took part in protest demonstrations and strikes across the country that often resulted in clashes with law enforcers until Chaudhry was finally reinstated in 2009.
Khan, whose government was ousted in April 2022 via a parliamentary no-trust vote, has been in jail since Aug. 5 after he was convicted in a case involving the sale of state gifts. He has also been remanded in jail custody in another case in which he is charged with leaking state secrets. Khan says the cases against him are politically motivated and are an attempt by his political rivals and the military to keep him from winning the upcoming general elections. Both deny the allegations.
Before being jailed and since his ouster, Khan had led a campaign, including through holding marches and addressing large public and virtual gatherings, calling for early elections. Polls were due in Pakistan in November but have been delayed until January as the election commission redraws hundreds of new constituency boundaries after a fresh census.
“Legal fraternity must start and lead a movement for upholding the rights of the people of Pakistan, foremost their fundamental right to vote, to choose their leaders and to define their future themselves,” read a message by Khan, posted through his family on social media platform X.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman said it was not important whom the people chose as their leader but that they were allowed the right to do so as per the country’s constitution.
He warned that Pakistan was witnessing the “steady destruction and dismantling” of its judicial system.
“If we do not fight for justice and stand behind our judges, we will not be able to establish Constitutional supremacy in this country or stand up against this rule of might, where only the fittest and the richest survive,” the statement said.
Khan’s party has faced a widening crackdown since May 9, when angry supporters took to the streets and attacked military properties and torched government buildings following his brief arrest in a separate land graft case.
Authorities rounded up hundreds of Khan supporters across the country after the protests and many of his oldest and closest aides announced they were leaving Khan, quitting politics, or joining other parties.