ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan has said both the ruling Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) alliance and the military establishment want him out of the election race.
He alleged this during an interview with Al Jazeera, during which he was asked who he was playing against him; the government or the military establishment. The PTI chief replied that essentially it was the 12-party alliance in the government, “but they were brought into the power by the ex-army chief”. He further said that the military means one man, the army chief, because the army is not a democratic institution. “So basically, what he decides goes.”
“Now what is happening, clearly, is that neither the military nor these 12 parties — […] they are doing everything to make sure that I am out of the election race.”
Hours after the Punjab police cordoned off Imran Khan’s Zaman Park residence, a number of PTI workers and supporters started gathering outside Zaman Park. Local media reported that a number of party workers and supporters, including children and women, have gathered at the main entrance of Imran Khan’s house. Later, the media reported that the Punjab police seemed to have backed off from the PTI’s chairman’s residence.
Meanwhile, PTI leader Hammad Azhar has said that party workers were arrested by police in “civil dresses” during a funeral today. PTI leader Farrukh Habib has said that former prime minister Imran Khan has given “full access” to national and international media to Zaman Park. The move, he said, was aimed at broadcasting the “retrieval of terrorists from his residence as was being claimed by the provincial caretaker information minister”. The Canal Road outside Imran Khan’s Zaman Park residence has been reopened for traffic now. Confirmed the media.
PTI workers and leaders are being arrested by the law-enforcing agencies back-to-back after they resorted to violent protests on May 9 following the party chairman’s arrest on May 9, in which the Corps Commander Lahore’s residence and General Headquarters was also attacked.
Thousands of workers and top-tier PTI leadership — including Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Shireen Mazari and Asad Umar, — have been arrested under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO). The crackdown comes after the civil and military leadership vowed to bring all the vandals to justice by holding their trial under the Pakistan Army Act and Official Secrets Act, with the army determined to ensure such incidents do not occur again. PTI, although, has distanced itself from the attacks on the military installations and maintained that it supports the armed forces of the country.
