RAWALPINDI: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Saturday announced that his party has decided not to remain part of the current political system and will instead resign from all the assemblies.
Addressing the party’s power show in Rehmanabad, Khan said, “We will not be part of this system. We have decided to quit all the assemblies and get out of this corrupt system.”
Notably, Imran’s PTI is in power in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Imran said the PTI had decided not to go to Islamabad to avert any destruction or chaos.
He added that he would soon be meeting his chief ministers and the parliamentary party about the matter and would soon make the announcement about when the party would leave the assemblies.
Imran in Rawalpindi for ‘climax’ of the long march. Earlier, Pakistan interior minister Rana Sanaullah told Imran to postpone march, and return to parliament for sake of Pakistan’s progress and warned of the possible terror threat.
Khan has resumed his protest march toward Islamabad after surviving an apparent assassination attempt earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Sanaullah has claimed that the PTI will not be able to dissolve the Punjab Assembly as a no-confidence motion was ready to be moved.
Sanaullah, while speaking on Geo News show Naya Pakistan, said once the requisition has been made, the ruling party will not be able to dissolve the assembly.
The minister deemed Imran’s decision to quit all assemblies “admission of his failure”. Imran has claimed that his party did not come to Rawalpindi for elections or politics. Rather, he said it was the need of the country to have fresh elections.
Imran said he did not care about elections since they would be held in nine months’ time and his party would win them. Imran has said that the country’s history will attest that he kept on fighting till the last ball for Pakistan.
“I also want to say that those who saw a massive rise in their assets and trampled the nation’s rights … history is also looking towards him and writing down what he did with the country.”
Imran has lashed out at a shadowy figure he calls “Dirty Harry” and accused of him being behind the alleged mistreatment of PTI supporters and journalists.
“Threats to journalists and they’re being beaten … and then what happened with Arshad Sharif. We never saw this in Pakistan. There was barbarity and they were threatened.
“What was their fault? Because they were bringing Imran Khan’s narrative to the media,” he said.
Imran said the figure was also behind the harassment of the PTI’s social media workers and lawmakers Azam Swati and Shahbaz Gill.
Imran has lamented why the country’s institutions do not learn from their past mistakes. He alleged that the establishment and Election Commission of Pakistan had united with those in the current government against him but the nation had sent a resounding message that they stood with the PTI.
“I remember what happened in East Pakistan … we did not do justice with them or with Pakistan’s biggest political party and we did not learn.” Imran has claimed that there were three shooters in the Wazirabad assassination attempt on him.
He said two were those he had previously identified — one who fired at Imran and the other leaders and the other who fired at the container’s front — and a third person who was meant to silence the assassin so they could not divulge any details.
Imran claimed that this third shooter had actually killed a person who lost his life in the attack while trying to kill the would be assassin.
PTI chief Imran Khan has alleged that all those quarters saying his party had concocted a “false narrative”, around a US cypher and a subsequent regime change conspiracy to remove his government, were actually part of the conspiracy itself.
Imran questioned whether the cypher in question did not exist or was not put before the National Security Council or whether US ambassador Donald Lu had not had a conversation with Pakistan envoy Asad Majeed.
“Didn’t the NSC say protest against America and send them a demarche … When all this is the truth then how can someone say this was all a drama?”
Former premier Imran Khan rued that he had failed in one thing during his 3.5 years of government, which he said was to bring the powerful under the law. He lamented that the National Accountability Bureau and other institutions were not truly under his control and received orders from behind from somewhere else.
“The ones who had control never gave an order to proceed with investigations. Instead of putting them criminals in jails, they the establishment were making deals with them.”
Imran said those “who had power” did not consider corruption to be wrong. PTI Chairman Imran Khan lauded his government’s performance in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic and credited its decisions with taking the country out of that crisis.
He said the opposition relentlessly criticised him and called on him to impose a lockdown but could not respond to his questions about what would happen to daily wagers and labourers as a result.
Imran then recounted his government’s economic performance and initiatives such as the health card.
Khan has said that the country’s current problems are not due to a lack of resources but no rule of law since the beginning.
He particularly hit out at the Sharif and Zardari families and accused them of making decisions and key appointments in their favour instead of the national interest. Imran said prosperous societies had a rule of law while developing countries were afflicted by no regard for the law which explained their problems.
Khan has said the nation stands at a “defining point” and “crossroads” with two paths before it. Addressing the charged crowd in Rehmanabad, he said one path was one of blessings and greatness while the other path was of humiliation and destruction.
Khan called on his party faithful to free themselves from the fear of death if they wanted to live freely. “Fear makes an entire nation into slaves,” he said. PTI chief Imran Khan has said it will take three more months for his leg to heal.
Addressing the party’s power show in Rehmanabad, he said everyone had advised him when he was setting out from Lahore not to do so due to his injured leg as well as the threats to his life. (ANI)