‘Nation standing with judges’: We’ll be on roads again after 14th, says Imran

LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan said on Saturday the entire nation was standing with the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) and other judges of the apex court against the mafia putting pressure on the Supreme Court to run away from elections.

Addressing his party workers at the Lakshmi Chowk metro station here, Imran said: “It is the entire nation’s decision to stand with the Constitution and [against] the mafia which is putting pressure on [judges] and doing propaganda against the chief justice and other judges.”

The PTI chief led a rally in the provincial capital to “support the Constitution, Supreme Court, and the chief justice of Pakistan” and announced that his party would hold rallies every day till May 14 when elections to the Punjab Assembly were scheduled to be held on the Supreme Court orders. After May 14, he warned, his party would be on the roads again to secure its constitutional rights and elections to Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa assemblies.

On Saturday, the PTI held rallies in four cities, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, and Peshawar. The PTI chairman said he would come out and prepare the public for protest if elections were not held. “When a country’s Constitution is violated, it means the justice system and rule of law have ended. Most of all, it means that the nation has lost its freedom and become a slave.

“We will not rest till elections are held and Pakistan is freed,” he added.

Referring to Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s recent visit to India to attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Khan said the way Pak foreign minister was treated by his Indian counterpart was a “matter of shame for all of us”. Khan also addressed remarks made by Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who called Bilawal “a promoter, justifier, and spokesperson of a terrorism industry, which is the mainstay of Pakistan”.

“Do you (Jaishankar) have no manners or etiquette? A guest comes to your country... inviting him and insulting him reflects on your country,” Khan said.

Meanwhile, Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb reacted sharply to Imran Khan’s speech at the Lahore rally. In a statement on Saturday, she said the PTI chairman was claiming to be standing with the Supreme Court only because he wanted to escape punishment in cases including Toshakhana, foreign funding and Tyrian paternity case, registered against him.

She said Imran stole watches, grabbed land, received illegal foreign funding, and raised the price of flour, sugar and electricity. He prepared the budget for Farah Gogi and Bushra Bibi and borrowed over Rs20,000 billion and he made a huge budget worth £190 million pounds received from the UK.

The minister said Imran Khan should not worry about the next fiscal year’s budget as “the facility of getting selected was no more available and the facilitators had also gone”. She said the Result Transmission System now had been fixed. The government, which destroyed the economy, and caused unprecedented inflation and unemployment for four years, would never come to power again, she claimed.

Marriyum said the government, which isolated the country on the foreign front, closed the CPEC and stopped the country’s development process, would not come to power again. “Now the budget will be prepared only for the people and not for Farah Gogi and Bushra Begum,” she added.

The PMLN spokesperson said elections would be held simultaneously in the country on the completion of the constitutional term of assemblies, but the foreign agent, Toshakhana watch thief and Tyrian’s father would cry and shout on the streets. She said Imran played with the Constitution for the sake of power and violated it for the sake of power. The minister said Imran insulted the representatives of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa for the sake of power and made a conspiracy of cipher for the sake of power. It was strange that Imran was talking about the IMF, though he himself violated the deal with the Fund.

Marriyum said the government was going to make a budget which would be business-friendly and provide job opportunities to people. The government was going to make a budget that would eliminate inflation and poverty.