Imran Khan’s actions against army failed: Pervez Khattak

PESHAWAR: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Parliamentarians chief and former defence minister Pervez Khattak on Saturday said General Qamar Javed Bajwa had offered him a written assurance on behalf of prime minister Shehbaz Sharif that if Imran Khan postponed his protest, the government would announce the general elections within five days.

He said Imran Khan wanted to launch a revolution against the army that faced a failure. Talking informally to senior journalists in Peshawar, the former defence minister said Imran Khan depended more on bureaucracy than his political colleagues and actually his principal secretary Azam Khan was running the government. He said General Faiz Hameed was making decisions instead of the cabinet.

Khattak said the popularity of Imran Khan was actually the activities of his 1,000 social media influencers who try to create an impression that Imran Khan and the PTI are the most popular by using bad language against opponents on social media. Khattak said his party was getting an overwhelming response from people. “Over 60 per cent of electables in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have joined our party because I had brought them to the PTI. I have personal connections with political families and several electables will join us in the coming days. We will start party activities and hopefully, during the next two months, our party will be in a good position.”

He said the PTIP would be the majority party in the upcoming elections in the province and they would form the next government. “Obviously, I will be the chief minister and Mahmood Khan will be the governor. I think the general elections will be held in February next year. If people approach courts on this, the elections may be delayed further.”

He said there were three occasions when Imran was offered elections. “The real agenda of Imran Khan was to create a revolution against the army, in which he faced a failure. The coming time will bring more difficulties for Imran because there are four major cases against him, including those related to Toshakhana, 190 million pounds, cipher and May 9 incident.” Khattak said he had no objection to Governor Haji Ghulam Ali as he had no role in the administration after the formation of current non-political caretaker cabinet. He said the economy had to be documented because there were only 2 million taxpayers out of the population of 244 million. “The country needs economic reforms, documentation and change in bureaucratic system. Exports should be increased, giving facilities to exporters to earn dollars for the country.” Khattak said Imran played with the nation and used to tell his social media team not to talk more than five or six points so as to fix the agenda in the minds of people.

Former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister Mahmood Khan and former provincial minister Ziaullah Bangash were present.