I haven’t even played on cipher yet, says Imran

ISLAMABAD: PTI Chairman Imran Khan said Wednesday that it was a “good thing” that the government allegedly leaked an audio about the US cipher, saying he thinks the cipher itself should be leaked to the public.

Imran Khan accused Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and company of leaking the latest audio. “Well done on leaking it. I would say the cipher should get leaked too and so everyone knows what a big foreign conspiracy was made,” he said. “I haven’t even played on it yet. Now we will play when they expose it.”

In a major development, a sound bite of former prime minister Imran Khan speaking about the US cipher— what he time and again has alleged was a threat letter to Pakistan — surfaced earlier Wednesday after multiple audio leaks of top government officials.

When a journalist asked him whether he will hold talks or call for a sit-in, to which Imran Khan said that ‘you will have to wait now’. Later, addressing a seminar at the Punjab House here, Imran Khan said that he was very happy that Shehbaz Sharif’s office has come to know that the audiotape of Azam Khan and Imran Khan has come; it is against the Official Secret Act and he is thinking that he should take Shehbaz Sharif to court or take him to the cases of Rs16 billion. Already four persons linked to this are dead, Maqsood peon is dead while three more witnesses have been killed.

He again spoke on the latest audio leak and said that it was good that ‘you have brought the cipher, now make the whole cipher public and bring it in front of the nation that what language is a US Under Secretary Donald Lu using and how arrogantly he is telling the Pakistani diplomat that if you do not remove your prime minister in the no-confidence motion, Pakistan will have to face the consequences, and if you remove it, you will be forgiven.

Imran said that he wanted to bring the cipher before the public, the whole nation should know what Donald Lu had said to diplomat Asad Majeed. The PTI chairman yet again hit out at Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja. “We will take the chief election commissioner to court. I have not seen a worse person than the chief election commissioner. You think that he is taking orders from fugitive, liar, corrupt and convicted that on which day our resignations have to be accepted. It has been proved that he is a servant of the Sharif family, there is no shame in him that he resigns himself”.

Imran said that he wonders that the protecters of the country do not see what is happening to the country. “We do not want to criticize the institutions unnecessarily. Does everyone not see what is happening to the country, since these two families came, these people became billionaires and made the country indebted. What is the mind that is again imposing these people? Whoever is doing this, they are not well-wishers of Pakistan and there can be no greater treason against the country than this.”

Referring to the audio leak of prime minister, he said that Maryam Nawaz is not so ashamed. She says that my son-in-law should get machinery from India and build a grid station of Rs600 million to 700 million for the private housing society at the expense of government; this expenditure has to be done by the housing society.

Imran said that they tried to make a self-reliant foreign policy. On this, the Americans repeatedly signalled that Pakistan has changed. “When you stand for the national interest, they respect you”.

He claimed that the bigger problem than the regime change in Pakistan is that the agencies have started considering us as enemies of Pakistan, the journalists who have credibility in Pakistan and those whom people listen to, are being treated as enemies as if Indian agents have come here; look at the media houses who take money and sell conscience, a qabza group took over a TV channel. Imran claimed that the nation has decided but the agencies have stood with the thieves and none looks to the corrupt journalists.

He said that justice gives rights to human beings and human rights liberate man. A free nation protects its rights. He added that the economy is connected with foreign policy and fundamental mistake was made when Pakistan came into existence.

Imran said that in the 1970s, the policy of nationalisation came, due to which industrialisation stopped. “Our country was going up at that time, due to nationalisation, the production of wealth ended. When the nation does not stand on its feet, then after some time it will become a slave by becoming indebted.”