Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI; , ) is a political party in Pakistan. It was founded in 1996 by Pakistani cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan, who served as the country's prime minister from 2018 to 2022. The PTI is one of the three major Pakistani political parties alongside the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML–N) and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), and it is the largest party in terms of representation in the National Assembly of Pakistan since the 2018 general election. With over 10 million members in Pakistan and abroad, it claims to be the country's largest political party by primary membership as well as one of the largest political parties in the world. Despite Khan's popular persona in Pakistan, the PTI had limited initial success: it failed to win, as a collective, a single seat in the 1997 general election and the 2002 general election; only Khan himself was able to win a seat. From 1999 to 2007, the PTI supported the military presidency of Pervez Musharraf. It rose in opposition to Musharraf in 2007 and also boycotted the 2008 general election, accusing it of having been conducted with fraudulent procedures under Musharraf's rule. The global popularity of the "Third Way" during the Musharraf era led to the rise of a new Pakistani political bloc focused on centrism, deviating from the traditional dominance of the centre-left PPP and the centre-right PML–N. When the PML–Q began to decline in the aftermath of Musharraf's presidency, much of its centrist voter bank was lost to the PTI. Around the same time, the PPP's popularity began to decrease after the disqualification of Yousaf Raza Gillani in 2012. Similarly, the PTI appealed to many former PPP voters, particularly in the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, due to its outlook on populism. In the 2013 general election, the PTI emerged as a major party with over 7.5 million votes, ranking second by number of votes and third by number of seats won. At the provincial level, it was voted to power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. During its time in opposition, the PTI, with the help of popular slogans such as, mobilized people in rallies over public distress on various national issues, the most notable of which was the 2014 Azadi march. In the 2018 general election, it received 16.9 million votes—the largest amount for any political party in Pakistan thus far.