Web Desk (LTN NEWS): After winning by-elections on Sunday by a huge margin, PTI Chairman Imran Khan said that his party is ready for the long march and that it won’t be delayed past October.
Imran Khan told reporters at a press conference, “My march will be in October if the government doesn’t announce when the next general election will be.”
The head of the PTI told the government that many people would join the anti-government march because he had called on the whole country to do so.
Khan said he was still giving the government time to decide.
“I am actually giving them more time before we start our long march protest,” he said.
He said it was impossible to talk to the people in charge.
“Criminals can’t be talked into anything. You can talk about peace with Baloch or Sindhi nationalists, but not with people who have broken the law like them.” Khan added.
Khan criticized the police for arresting the 75-year-old PTI leader Azam Swati in a “frivolous case” and then allegedly beating him up in police custody in front of his grandchildren.
“They beat up the 75-year-old in front of his grandchildren,” Khan said.
He criticized the government for allegedly torturing a former federal minister and leader of the PTI. He said that what the government did to him was completely shameless.
“Doesn’t Pakistan’s Constitution say that people have a right to their own sense of self-worth? These leaders didn’t want to have elections,” Khan said.
“We will talk to the international groups that protect human rights about these violations.”
The PTI leader accused the Sindh government and the provincial election commissioner of rigging and asked the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to hold new elections in Karachi’s NA-237 constituency.
“Sindh’s election commissioner was paid by the provincial government. We don’t accept the results of the Karachi-Korangi by-election and want a new vote,” he added.
He said that the elections were held in areas where PTI wasn’t strong and that the ruling coalition ran joint candidates to ensure that his party lost. But they didn’t succeed.
The former premier also said that the government did not want to hold the elections and used floods as an excuse.
“They said that country was flooded, but the floods didn’t affect the places where elections were held.”
Khan said that the Malir by-election in Karachi, which he lost to Abdul Hakeem Baloch of the PPP, was rigged against him.
Khan said again that he would call PTI workers at any time to start the long march to Islamabad.
“They are afraid that if the elections happen, they will lose,” he said.
The leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) said that the coalition government hasn’t been able to stop inflation, which was a jab. He kept saying that they were driving the country to ruin.
Khan said, “Political stability is only possible through elections.”
This was a repeat of his call for free and fair elections in the country.
The head of the PTI said, “No matter what happens, these thieves will be to blame.”
He promised them they would march to Islamabad while staying within the law.
Khan talked about how the police may have tortured PTI workers during the long march on May 25. He said that they would march on the federal capital with everything ready.
“No matter what they do, they will fail,” Khan said without saying his plan.
When the PTI leader talked about his plan, he said that Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah wouldn’t even get a chance to carry it out. He said in the last six months, the country had seen fascism, and democracy had been butchered.
“Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari’s time is up,” the head of the PTI said, adding that they will lose the elections.
We can win without the help of the umpire: Imran Khan
Khan said they could win elections even if they didn’t have help from umpires. The head of the PTI said of Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja, “I have never seen a more dishonest election commissioner in this country than Sikandar Sultan Raja.”
“Raja did not allow electronic voting machines (EVM),” he said, adding that if there were EVMs, they couldn’t rig the elections.
“I don’t play for bad teams”
Khan said he doesn’t play against weak teams and wants Nawaz to come back and play against him.
The leader of the PTI said that Nawaz couldn’t run for office until people forgave him for theft. He says he owns flats in London, but he hasn’t been able to explain how he got the money until today.
“Nawaz can’t play a game with a neutral umpire there,” he insisted.
Khan talked about what he said about state institutions and said that nobody wants to fight with them because it hurts the country in the end.
Khan led a meeting to figure out what to do next.
The former prime minister led a meeting of his party this morning to talk about what to do next after a landslide win in by-elections on Sunday.
Faisal Javed, a leader of the PTI, said that chairman Khan would soon decide what to do about the long march after consulting with the PTI leadership.
Javed said the party’s final call for the long march would be made public after the meeting.
The PTI leader won most of the seats in by-elections on Sunday. This gave him more power in his campaign to get the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government, which has been in power for six months, to call an early general election.
The head of the PTI ran for seven of the eight seats and won six. The other two seats went to the PPP, which is part of the ruling coalition.
Khan will have to step down from all but one of the seats he won, and more polls will have to be done. However, the fact that he won shows that voters liked what he had to say about politics.
The cricket player who changed careers and became a politician was sent home in April after a vote of “no confidence.” Since then, he has been speaking at huge public meetings all over Pakistan to ask for early elections.
