LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan Friday linked the stand-off between the ruling Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) and Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial, saying the same PML-N is now “threatening” the Chief Justice of Pakistan the same way it had “attacked” the top court back in 1997.
“As PMLN did in 1997 by storming SC to attack CJ Sajjad Ali Shah hearing a contempt petition against Nawaz Sharif, today PMLN is again threatening SC & CJP because they are petrified of elections,” he said in a tweet on Friday.
His statement comes as the Supreme Court earlier today rejected a request by Attorney General Pakistan Mansoor Awan for the formation of a full court bench as it continued hearing the PTI petition against delay in elections to the Punjab Assembly.
Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial said that neither the law nor rules talked about the composition of a full court and they would not ‘go back’ to the start as the matter was being heard since Monday.
The hearing continued after two judges – Justice Aminuddin Khan and Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail – recused themselves from the five-member bench.
Addressing the the common citizen in his tweets, PTI chairman Imran Khan urged the people to come out in protest for the sake of democracy and the rule of law in the country.
“I want ppl [people] of Pak to be ready to come out in streets if need be to save Rule of Law, the Constitution & democracy. We will be talking to all those pol[itical] parties who are prepared to stand up against this conspiracy,” the PTI chief said.
He also appealed to the lawyers’ community to again “take the lead as they did in 2007 lawyers’ movement to protect Pakistan’s Constitution and rule of Law”.
Separately, Imran Khan also linked the ‘threat’ to his life and the recent crackdown on his party to his ‘unprecedented popularity, claiming that those in power are hell-bent on avoiding electoral defeat.
In an interview with Times Radio, Imran said that he faces a threat to his life which has been confirmed by public statements made by Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah himself.
But while the government suspects the threat to be from “some foreign elements”, the PTI chief said he “knows that it is from the government itself”.
“There were three main people in the government that I believe were responsible for my assassination and I predicted that about six weeks before the attempt took place. They are still sitting in government, they are sabotaging the inquiry report because it was implicating them and I think that they are more threatened than ever,” he said.
“There was an intelligence agency general who was involved in this, I nominated him, the interior minister — who recently gave a statement that it is either us or them or some stupid statement like that — and then of course the prime minister. All of them have been involved in extra-judicial killings and there is a record about that,” he added.
“Since my party has won 30 out of 37 by-elections in the last few months, they know that we are favourites to win the elections,” Imran said his life was even “more under threat”.
Blaming former chief of army staff Qamar Javed Bajwa for his ouster, Imran said that he coopted the “guys who are in power right now” in the hopes that the PTI’s support would fizzle out.
However, Imran claimed that his party has consistently won more support pushing his rivals to take extreme measures to keep him from returning to the office through elections.
“There are 140 cases against me right now which include blasphemy, sedition and 40 cases of terrorism,” he stressed dismissing them all saying “nobody believes that I have broken the law because I have never broken the law in my life.”
“In fact, my movement is called the movement of justice, for rule of law,” he added.
“Whenever I go to trial courts, I get bail because there is nothing in the cases,” he claimed.
He also rubbished allegations that his party had been engaged in violent activities saying that “a party that wants election does not want violence”.
Imran also lamented the crackdown against his party leaders and workers — including the party’s missing social media head in Karachi Arshad Siddiqui — as well as the “blackout in media” against the PTI.
