DUBAI: The recent visit of top leadership of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) to Dubai is still under discussion and raised many questions that will take time to be unearthed. Although, the party officially claimed that the purpose of Imran Khan and his close aides’ visit to Dubai was to raise funds for his private university Namal. On Thursday, Imran Khan along with Aleem Khan and Jehangir Tareen attended an event for fund-raising but unfortunately the top brass of the PTI succeeded to collect not even the peanuts during the event. So, Imran Khan, who is the master of collecting funds, interrupted the gathering and bluntly stated, “If you don’t have money then don’t be ashamed; I am looking at participants’ downhearted faces like I am attending a funeral.” He further elaborated that he was not here to force the gathering to raise money for the educational institution. Then he suddenly left the venue by excusing to have more meetings. During the visit, Imran Khan not only avoided the media, but also refused to talk about political issues of the country even though he had been very vocal about political issues in his past visit to Dubai. Interestingly, the cricketer-turned-politician ignored the political questions during the visit by saying, “it is not allowed” but he presided over the political meeting of his party based in Middle East where he asked the local leaders of the party to mitigate differences. In 2014, Imran Khan had announced in Dubai that he would not come to the Emirates for fundraising next time as he made a team for the purpose, but once again Imran Khan appeared in Dubai for fundraising. But many are reluctant to believe that the purpose of the visit was merely to raise funds. Some political analysts believe that the PTI chairman was here in Dubai to apologise to local authorities for his role in the National Assembly against the idea of sending Pakistani soldiers to Yemen, but a PTI leader who does not want to be named denied the presumption. The inside party sources said that the PTI leadership intended to meet the local authorities but unfortunately they were not able to meet them. Analysts say that though the chairman of PTI has been successfully knocked out his political opponent Nawaz Sharif not only from the office of premiership but legislative assembly too and now he has been asked to make friends internationally, specially the Arab countries. A source informed The News that Imran Khan and his close aides hired a private chartered plane from a company based in Pakistan that cost almost $9,000 for one way travel. Almost $40,000 to $45,000 were spent only in the air travel and airport charges of Imran Khan’s two day visit to Dubai.
