Imran insists on fresh polls to rid country of all crises

LAHORE:

 

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan on Thursday reiterated his stance that free and fair elections were the only solution to the ongoing political instability and economic chaos in the country.

“The ruling coalition is running away from fresh elections because they fear defeat,” Imran said while addressing charged workers and supporters staging a protest demonstration via video link outside the Governor House.

A large number of people joined the protest against Punjab Governor Balighur Rehman for his “unconstitutional intervention” in the provincial affairs, although all roads to the Governor House had been sealed ahead of the rally.

He said that the top coalition leaders, Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari, had just one-point agenda – saving their corruption.

“Earlier leaders of the ruling alliance were taunting that if you want snap polls, you should dissolve Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) assemblies, where you have the government but when we decided to do that [dissolution], they had brought two no-trust motions just to avert this move,” Imran told a charged crowd.

“It was our constitutional right to dissolve our governments and go for fresh elections. But the ruling alliance, especially Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari, was trying to scuttle our decision. They are afraid of the elections and have only one-point agenda – save their corruption,” he added.

The former prime minister warned that the corrupt rulers had made white-collar crimes legal in the country, adding that the ruling coalition had given the licence to big criminals to steal by amending the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) laws.

Imran said he was warning all institutions, including the establishment, judiciary, civil bureaucracy, and all citizens of Pakistan that the country was at a juncture, where it could suffer irreparable loss.

“Everyone in the country knows that free and fair elections are the only solutions to the current crisis,” he said. “I ask state institutions why they should not worry about the country. All international institutions and investors have lost trust in the Pakistani economy. These rulers have put all national assets on stake,” the former prime minister told the rally participants.

“Our foreign exchange reserves have been wiped out, the country’s exports have fallen, remittances have shrunk and soon we will not have funds to service our international loans and liabilities,” he said, adding that he had never seen such a situation in Pakistan in the past 50 years.

Imran said at present, the country was stuck in an economic quagmire because of the decision of one man, who conspired against an elected government which had pulled the country from the brink of an economic crisis.

“Everyone in the world knows that Pakistan’s economy was growing at an unprecedented rate, when the ‘regime change’ operation was conducted in the country,” he said. “But despite all the pressure and high-handedness of the state machinery, the people of Pakistan have rejected this imported government.”

Imran said that the PTI had been governing in 66% of Pakistan, stressing that an overwhelming majority of the people wanted fresh general elections.

“Surveys are showing that 70% of Pakistanis are demanding fresh elections in the country, except those who had parked their wealth in foreign lands,” he added.

The PTI chairman pointed out that 750,000 Pakistanis migrated from the country, owing to the uncertain political and economic situation.

Managers in Jabal Ali in United Arab Emirates (UAE) highlighted that Pakistanis had made record investment there in the past 10 years, he said.

Criticising the foreign policy of the incumbent government, Imran said Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had spent over Rs1.75 billion on foreign trips but he could not manage to visit Afghanistan, where the country needed him the most.

He pointed out that terrorism was getting out of hand, owing to failed foreign policy of the incumbent government.

Today, the biggest challenge was to ensure the rule of law in the country. “If we failed to maintain the supremacy of law the country could not progress,” he maintained.

During the PTI government, Imran said, Pakistan had exemplary relations with the new Afghan government.

“Various world leaders thanked me for facilitating evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from Afghanistan,” he added.

“But today, we are witnessing that the fence between Pakistan and Afghanistan is being destroyed and infiltration is on the rise,” he continued. “Billions of rupees spent on this fence is going in the drain, while the incumbent rulers are protecting their loot.”Separately, addressing the PTI parliamentary party meeting through video link, Imran said that the opposition’s no-confidence motion in the Punjab Assembly would be defeated.

Punjab Senior Minister Mian Aslam Iqbal was also in attendance.
“We will immediately dissolve the provincial assemblies after the no-confidence motion,” Imran said.

Of the total 176 PTI MPAs, 156 participated in the meeting while the remaining could not attend it due to foreign visits and other reasons.

The former prime minister instructed all the provincial legislators to attend the Punjab Assembly on the day when the no-confidence motion would be taken up and he was confident that the opposition would face defeat.

“The opposition will never be able to gather 186 members; we will leave the assembly in any case,” he added.

He said that once the assemblies were dissolved, the PTI would go to the people while the opposition approach the courts.

During the meeting, the lawmakers deliberated on the Punjab Assembly session on Friday and the strategy to fight the no-confidence motion.