F.P. Report
ISLAMABAD: Former president and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari said on Tuesday that now it was time to purge the Prime Minister House of what he called this ‘impure’ Imran Khan.
Addressing the PPP workers, part of the party’s long march, at Rawat before departing for Islamabad, he said it would be better to replace Imran with ‘Sharif’.
He went on to say that he knew his foes and friends fully well.
Former president vowed to make the no-trust motion submitted against the prime minister today (Tuesday) successful. “And if we do that, we will be able to rid the nation of price hike and other issues,” he expressed optimism.
PPP march
In a spectacle not often seen in the country, there is a sea of people getting desperate to reach Islamabad’s Red Zone as Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) workers, whose long march towards the federal capital from Karachi, which today (Tuesday, March 8, 2022) entered its 10th day, is closing in on from the south while the caravans of the Awami National Party (ANP) and PPP’s Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) chapter are descending on the federal capital from the north.
PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is leading the marchers, is scheduled to deliver his first speech today at Sohan Interchange from where he and the party activists (Jiyalas) will head to Islamabad’s D-Chowk in front of the Parliament House where they plan to stay unless the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government is sent home.
Before leaving for Sohan, the PPP workers had a heavy breakfast at Rawat where they spent the night.
On the other hand, ANP is in no mood to lag behind as its workers, too, have set out on a long march towards Islamabad from Peshawar.
Party’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) President Aimal Wali Khan is leading them.
The ANP workers plan to join the PPP’s sit-in outside the Parliament House.
Reacting to the road blockades set up by the government, ANP Secretary General Mian Iftikhar Hussain has said that the party’s march on Islamabad against inflation will not stop until and unless it reaches D-Chowk. “The right to protest is every citizen’s right and is enshrined in the constitution,” he has said, adding that the very fact that the ‘selected’ government has started creating obstacles in the way of marchers goes on to show that it has ‘panicked’.
He has further said that ‘selected’ Prime Minister Imran Khan should remember it that it was he and the workers of his party who had remained camped at D-Chowk for 126 days. “How can a person deny the same right to others?” he questioned.
He has stated categorically that no power on earth could stop the ANP from marching towards the federal capital. “Our target is Imran Khan. Today, the entire Pakistan is protesting against an ‘incompetent’ government, led by PM Imran Khan,” he has claimed.
Mian Iftikhar has reiterated that it has always been ANP’s stance that the present government had sneaked into power through rigging in the elections, and it is only by holding free and transparent elections that Pakistan could find a way out of the present mess.
Meanwhile, despite the fact that the government has placed containers on the roads leading to the D-Chowk in Islamabad’s Red Zone, people have already started infiltrating there, although in small numbers.
On the other hand, heavy contingents of police have also taken their positions at the protest site.
