Islamabad: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has called on the masses to observe a countrywide “shutter-down” strike by closing their businesses in protest against alleged rigging today, Sunday, on the second anniversary of the Feb. 8, 2024, general elections.
Millions of people took to polling booths across the country on Feb. 8, 2024, to vote for their national and provincial candidates. However, the polling was marred by a nationwide shutdown of cellphone networks and delayed results, leading to widespread allegations of election manipulation by the PTI and other opposition parties. The caretaker government at the time and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) both rejected the allegations.
Khan’s PTI candidates contested the Feb. 8 elections as independents after the party was barred from the polls. They won the most seats but fell short of the majority needed to form a government, which was made by a smattering of rival political parties led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The government insists the polling was conducted transparently and that Khan’s party was not denied a fair chance.
“Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and the opposition alliance Tehreek-e-Tahafuz-e-Ayin-e-Pakistan (TTAP) are holding a nationwide shutter-down strike today,” Haleem Adil Sheikh, president of the PTI’s chapter in Sindh, told Arab News.
“We had appealed to the people to keep their businesses closed today because on this day, the people of Pakistan were deprived of their right to send their true representatives to parliament.”
Sheikh said the party was also mourning the victims of a deadly suicide blast in Islamabad on Friday which killed over 30 people.
TTAP chief and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Mehmood Khan Achakzai, appealed to police in Sindh and Punjab not to disturb people who were participating in the strike.
“The people of Pakistan must express their anger by closing their shops,” Achakzai said on Saturday while speaking to reporters.
Ajmal Baloch, president of the All Pakistan Traders Association, told Arab News that the group had not called for a strike.
“It’s the call of a political party and we do not close shops on the call of a political party,” Baloch said. “We only give calls of strike on traders or national issues.”
However, he said if someone wanted to close their shops out of political affiliation, the association would not stop them.
Khan was ousted from power in April 2022 after what is widely believed to be a falling out with the country’s powerful top generals. The army denies it interferes in politics.
He has been in prison since August 2023 and faces a slew of legal challenges that ruled him out of the Feb. 8 general elections and which he says are politically motivated to keep him and his party away from power.
In January 2025, an accountability court convicted Khan and his wife in the £190 million Al-Qadir Trust land corruption case, sentencing him to 14 years and her to seven years after finding that the trust was used to acquire land and funds in exchange for alleged favors. The couple denies any wrongdoing.
