Imran Khan apologises to ECP

ISLAMABAD: On the orders of a larger bench of Islamabad High Court, PTI Chairman Imran Khan on Monday filed a reply with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to a contempt notice, as the electoral body would announce its judgement in the contempt of court case on September 27.

A four-member bench, headed by the Chief Election Commissioner Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza, adjourned the hearing of the contempt case until Wednesday after Imran filed a reply to the August 24 contempt notice.

Imran’s reply was filed on the orders of the IHC larger bench, which after hearing his writ petition on September 20 questioning the jurisdiction of the ECP to proceed in the contempt case, had ordered him to ‘affirmatively’ file a reply by Tuesday.

Imran’s lawyer Babar Awan made arguments about the history of contempt proceedings.  He told the bench that Imran owned his junior lawyer Saqlain Haider’s unconditional apology made before the ECP, which should have ended the matter.

He read the ECP orders whereby the PTI was repeatedly ordered to produce financial records in the foreign funding case that became the basis of contempt case. Awan said Imran had fully agreed to Saqlain Haider’s four-page written statement in which he had requested the commission on his behalf to apologise for contempt and requested the commission to dismiss the contempt proceedings against his client. 

Meanwhile, in his written statement submitted to the ECP, Imran Khan said he respected the commission and believed in the supremacy of constitutional institutions. The petitioner and PTI founding member Akbar S. Babar’s counsel Syed Ahmed Hasan, however, argued that Imran had successively failed to comply with the ECP orders and instead repeatedly used an extremely contemptuous language against the ECP.

In this context, Hasan read a fresh application about Imran’s most recent contemptuous statement against the ECP made on September 20, the day his counsel was busy arguing in the Islamabad High Court about his client’s respect for the commission.

He said the PTI junior lawyer’s apology was publicly disowned by Imran, which led to the contempt application.  Furthermore, he said the PTI junior lawyer’s apology could not be accepted as that of Imran since the lawyer had so far not filed his accreditation papers with the ECP.

The CEC reserved orders that were announced a short while later whereby the contempt case was adjourned until September 27 for orders on Imran’s reply and review of his reply to the fresh application filed by the petitioner highlighting yet another contemptuous statement of Imran Khan against the ECP.

Before the next hearing in the ECP, Imran’s writ petition against the ECP show cause notice would come up before the larger bench of the IHC on Tuesday (today) where his reply to the show cause notice was expected to be reviewed. Later, talking to the media outside the Election Commission, Akbar S. Babar said Imran’s vanity and ego had put the PTI in great jeopardy.

He said it was a fact that Imran continued to defame, discredit, and scandalise the ECP adding that as long as the powerful did not succumb to the authority of constitutional bodies, there could be no rule of law in the country. 

He asked how an ordinary citizen could be expected to obey the law when their political role models considered themselves above the law. Babar said by refusing to offer an unconditional apology before the ECP, Imran was only negating his own often repeated sermons that ‘those who cannot repent their mistakes can never rise.’

Babar said those advising Imran not to submit an unconditional apology to the ECP appeared to have a sinister agenda to damage the PTI. “They are neither friends of Imran Khan nor of PTI. Any leader, who cannot repent and make amends is unfit to lead the country,” he concluded.