PTI takes ‘U-turn’ after Imran offers open hearing of foreign funding case

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) doesn’t agree with Prime Minister Imran Khan over the open hearing of the foreign funding case against the party.

On Jan 20, Imran addressed a ceremony in Waziristan, wherein he had called for the open hearing of the foreign funding cases against all political parties, including the PTI, to come clean.

It seems that the PTI legal team doesn’t consider it as a good idea. According to a statement filed by PTI lawyer Shah Khawar in the Election Commission of Pakistan, the PTI has no plans to make its financial statement accessible and the statement of the PTI chairman was “misconstrued”.

“The statement of party Chairman has been wrongly construed which is not tantamount to provide [sic] documents furnished by the answering respondents (PTI) and material collected by this scrutiny committee,” Dawn reported the lawyer as saying.

The statement was filed in response to a plea submitted by PTI founding member Akbar S Babar — the petitioner in the foreign funding case. Babar had urged the ECP to make public the records of the PTI in the wake of the statement by the PM.

Speaking to media, Babar said that PM Imran attempted to mislead the public by his statement. “The PTI has a poor record when it comes to transparency in the case,” he told reporters. Babar said that he and his lawyers would decide their future course of action after the committee’s order on Feb 9.

The foreign funding against the ruling party case was filed by its founding member Akbar S Babar in 2014. The ECP had started fresh scrutiny of the PTI accounts — a process going on since March 2018.

The PTI had admitted last month that its agents in the US might have been involved in the illegal funding without the knowledge of the party chief, Imran Khan.