In a surprise move, Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan, who is currently languishing in jail, has applied to be in the running as the next chancellor of Britain’s prestigious University of Oxford.
In 1972, Khan studied philosophy, politics and economics at Keble College, Oxford, graduating in 1975. He also captained the University of Oxford cricket team, before going on to become one of the cricket world’s greatest all-rounders.
Oxford has relaxed its rules for the incarcerated Khan and allowed nominations and voting to be carried out online in October. Khan, who served as chancellor of the University of Bradford from 2005 until 2014, is vying to replace conservative peer Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, who announced in February his resignation as Oxford’s chancellor.
What is interesting here is the timing of Khan's application for this post. It coincides with talk of Pakistan’s federal government banning Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party over terrorism charges. This begs two questions: Does Khan hope to draw international attention to his party’s perceived political victimisation by powerful actors in Pakistan? And does his application carry some signal to Pakistan’s powerful military?
The 71-year-old Khan has applied to contest for the position after spending a year in a Pakistani jail on various charges, from corruption to terrorism. His supporters call the cases against him politically motivated. Last month, the United Nations declared Khan's detention arbitrary, saying there was no legal basis for keeping Khan in jail.
While the people of Pakistan spoke through ballots, attempts were made by powerful political actors to alter the public mandate through manipulation of the election results.
The former prime minister had engaged in open confrontation with the military establishment, which was allegedly behind the ouster of his government in a no-confidence move in April 2022. Attempts were made to exclude Khan’s PTI from the electoral race through a massive crackdown on PTI leaders, workers and supporters. Last year, Khan accused the powerful military of openly trying to destroy his political party. In an interview with Reuters, Khan was asked who was behind the crackdown. “It is completely the establishment … Establishment obviously means the military establishment, because they are really now openly – I mean, it’s not even hidden now – they’re just out in the open.”
In the February 2024 elections, many Pakistanis voted for independent candidates in a show of support for the incarcerated Khan who had been imprisoned six months before the elections. The independents, backed by Khan, won a majority of seats.
While the people of Pakistan spoke through ballots, attempts were made by powerful political actors to alter the public mandate through manipulation of the election results. In an interview with ITV News from solitary confinement, conducted via lawyers, Khan congratulated the new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, but urged him and his Labour colleagues “to imagine if their overwhelming victory was stolen … For nearly a year now, I have been confined in a seven-by-eight-foot death cell, a space typically reserved for terrorists and those on death row.”
What will happen if Khan wins the race for Oxford chancellor? By contesting the position, with speculation that heavyweights such as former UK prime ministers Tony Blair and Boris Johnson could also be in the running, but more focus on former Conservative foreign secretary William Hague and Labour peer Peter Mandelson, Khan will undoubtedly attract global attention and build international pressure on Pakistan’s military establishment. There will be implications for Pakistani politics, too. Whatever the outcome, the former international cricketer is determined to play until the last ball of his political innings.
