Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister, said on Monday that his successor Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s brother and PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League (N)) supremo Nawaz Sharif was afraid that Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was “more popular than the ruling coalition,” and thus the government was making “deliberate attempts to delay elections.” Khan has been reiterating that the “only solution”.
Khan also accused Pakistan’s Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Raja Sultan of sabotaging electronic voting machines (EVMs) in collaboration with and in support of the Sharif government. “We introduced EVMs to hold transparent elections in the country,” he was quoted as saying, accusing the electoral watchdog of bias.
Imran Khan, who was deposed in April after a no-confidence vote, received a boost a day ago when he won six National Assembly seats in by-elections held on Sunday. In the crucial by-election, his party reportedly won six of the eight National Assembly seats, while the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) won two – NA-157 Multan and NA-237 Karachi- which were bagged by the PTI in the 2018 general elections.