Imran Khan vows to lead “Biggest Azadi March” of country’s history

Ishaq Khan

PESHAWAR: Former prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has vowed to take out the biggest rally from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to Islamabad in connection with his Azadi March call tomorrow (Wednesday).

This he said while addressing to a press conference in Peshawar on Tuesday. Imran Khan said his scheduled long march will be held on May 25 in any case as no hurdles could stop them. He said PTI youth will be responsible for removing hurdles from the road during the march.

Imran Khan lashed out at the ‘so-cold’ democratic parties’ coalition government for holding a crackdown on the PTI workers in Punjab and Sindh especially.

He said that the cabinet of ‘criminals’ had made an illegal decision. He implored that the entire nation was looking at the institutions.

Imran Khan said PTI’s long march is a test of the judiciary, the police, the bureaucracy and the ‘neutrals’. He said this during his address to the PTI Youth Wing in Peshawar on Tuesday evening.

He said now the judiciary, bureaucracy and the neutrals should decide about to go with the right or not.

Imran Khan asked the ‘neutrals’ and judges what kind of government took such actions. It’s a defining moment for everyone, he added. He warned the institutions if the country slid into chaos, they would be responsible. He asked the country’s judiciary and ‘neutrals’ to “do the right thing”.

He claimed that the country was looking towards the judiciary, telling them that this was their “trial”.

Imran Khan deplored the government’s late-night raids in Lahore and other cities to detain the PTI activists. He asserted that the party had a right to stage a peaceful protest against the ‘imported conspiracy.

He lamented that authorities conducted a raid at the house of Justice Nasira Iqbal and then made the video of the raid viral on social media. He said only a government of criminals could have done this kind of thing.

He maintained that during the PTI government’s tenure, the then opposition was allowed to stage protests and long marches several times. “They marched several times with the purpose of ousting the government but did we resort to these methods? … “Did we protest when Bilawal staged a long march? Did we arrest him? Fazlur Rehman also launched a march and we were ready to help them,” Mr Khan asked.

Mr Khan said that in his 26-year-old political history, he never broke law. He lamented the government’s crackdown on the PTI’s workers prodding institutions to take cognizance of it.

Mr Khan held that it’s a decisive moment in the history of Pakistan. He was of the view that in the current situation, early elections were the only solution. He, however, said that people were seeing only darkness ahead. He dubbed the Election Commission of Pakistan as a slave of the rulers. He also claimed that he knew about the journalists who were receiving money from abroad to launch a media campaign against his party.