KARACHI: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday extended an olive branch to rival politician and incarcerated former premier Imran Khan, urging leaders from his party to engage in talks with the government.
Khan, 71, has been in jail since August last year and faces a string of legal challenges which he says are motivated to keep him and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party out of politics. Since last year, he has been convicted in four different cases, including on charges of not declaring assets earned from the sale of state gifts, leaking state secrets and that his 2018 marriage to Bushra Khan violated Islamic laws.
Due to the convictions, Khan was ruled out of Feb. 8 general elections, in which his party won the most seats overall but did not have the simple majority needed to form government, which was formed by a fragile coalition led by Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party. Khan and his party have rejected the election results, citing widespread rigging, which the election commission denies.
“If their leader [Khan] has any difficulties, tell me. Let’s sit, talk about it and settle matters,” Sharif said while addressing the National Assembly on Wednesday. “Come sit with us [government] together for Pakistan’s bright future. There is no other way out.”
“I announce this right now, holding the entire parliament as evidence, that I don’t want any of this to happen with them [PTI] what we suffered and went through,” PM Sharif added, citing political victimization of the Sharif family and the PML-N party in the past.
Khan has faced numerous cases since his ouster from the PM’s office in 2022 in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence, which he alleges was backed by the powerful military in cahoots with his political rivals led by the Sharifs, after he had fallen out with top army generals. The army denies the accusations.
Khan and his party have faced a state-led crackdown after alleged followers of the PTI attacked government and military properties on May 9 last year after Khan was first briefly detained in a land graft case. Khan and the PTI say the riots have been used as a ruse by his political rivals and the military to crack down on the party, which is arguably the most popular in Pakistan. Both deny the charge.
Khan has also been indicted under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism law in connection with the May 9 violence. A section of Pakistan’s 1997 anti-terrorism act prescribes the death penalty as maximum punishment. Khan has denied the charges, saying he was in detention when the violence took place.
