LAHORE: Former prime minister and PTI Chairman Imran Khan said on Thursday that every effort was being made to prevent the party from coming to power again.
In his address to the nation, he said efforts were being made either to disqualify him or to send him to jail. Imran praised former Punjab chief minister and now PTI leader Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and his son Moonis Elahi for remaining steadfast in the face of sever pressure exerted by the establishment on them to part their ways with the PTI.
Former prime minister said the party loyalists as well as Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi were told that PTI was now ‘history’, and now they should dissociate themselves from it. Imran said that the party’s ‘Jail Bharo’ movement was a success. He said never ever in his life had he seen such a ‘biased’ Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). “The caretaker governments in both Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) are impartial,” he regretted.
PTI chief went on to say that what could be more unfortunate than this that those very 23 officers on whose orders, a brutal crackdown had been launched on the PTI workers on May 25 were again appointed on key posts despite the party’s strong opposition.
He also recounted the persecution PTI leaders and workers had to suffer after the party’s government was overthrown following the passage of the no-trust motion. “Party leaders like Shahbaz Gill, Azam Swati were stripped naked and beaten,” Imran said, adding, “And I was nominated in as many as 70 cases to intimidate me.” He said he had no doubt that the PTI’s foreign funding case was a pack of lies, and the court would throw it away once it was fixed for the hearing.