Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday urged the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to make foreign funding investigations of all parties public. While giving an interview to a private news channel, the prime minister said that ECP should public foreign funding investigations of all three parties– Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
“ECP should public investigations of foreign funding case and also launch a probe against Maulana Fazl-ur Rehman’s party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F),” he added.
“We have details of all 40,000 people who funded PTI,” said PM Imran. “No Papar Wala, Falooda wala or Cheeni wala funded to PTI,” said premier while taking a jibe at PPP and PML-N.
As the scrutiny committee of the ECP auditing foreign funding of the party, PTI seems to be in the troubled waters.
“PTI is the first party to have made a departure from the established practice of PML-N, PPP and JUI-F of receiving heavy donations from vested interest groups, land grabbers and other rogue elements and returning the favour to them at the cost people of Pakistan after the polls,” Information Minister Shibli Faraz told daily Dawn.
Notably, PTI’s founding member Akbar S. Babar had filed the case in 2014, alleging that nearly $3 million in illegal foreign funds were collected through two offshore companies and that money was sent through illegal ‘hundi‘ channels from the Middle East to accounts of ‘PTI employees’. He had also alleged that the foreign accounts used to collect funds were concealed from the annual audit reports submitted to the ECP.
Read more: PTI’s foreign funds to be audited
Future of PTI
It is worth noting that the Supreme Court has already discussed in detail the question of foreign funding in its 2017 judgment on a petition filed by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Hanif Abbasi, who had sought disqualification of Imran Khan.
The SC bench led by the former chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar while making a distinction between a ‘foreign aided’ party and ‘prohibited funding’ referred the case on December 16, 2017, to the ECP for a probe.
The judgment had said alleged falsity of the certificates issued by Imran under Article 13(2) of the PPO is the secondary fact, ascertainable by a competent court of law after the ECP gives its findings whether any prohibited funding has been received and collected by the PTI in terms of Article 6(3) of the PPO.
Now the ECP is hearing the matter to determine whether the PTI got funded through prohibited sources. During the hearing on August 1, 2017, former CJP Nisar had observed that the penal consequence of a collection of funds through prohibited sources is confiscation and not disqualification of party’s chief.
Legal experts believe that after Khawaja Muhammad Asif’s case, new jurisprudence has been evolved wherein the courts examine the intention of any lawmaker before giving declaration under Article 62 (1)(f) of Constitution, whose punishment is lifetime disqualification.
The court in Khawaja Asif case laid down an ‘objective criteria’ to test the honesty of lawmakers by declaring that Article 62 (1)(f) cannot be applied to every omission or non-disclosure of assets. “Mere omission to list an asset cannot be labeled as dishonesty unless some wrongdoing is associated with its acquisition or retention which is duly established in judicial proceedings,” said the judgment authored by Justice Faisal Arab.
Read more: PTI goes to the SC over PML-N foreign funding
Chaudhry Faisal Hussain advocate, who has appeared on behalf of PTI in this case, also said it is not a foreign funding case but a prohibited funding case and both have different penal consequences.
He said similar allegations of getting funds through prohibited sources are being faced by other major political parties. Therefore, the ECP must also examine the details of their accounts.