By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The opposition Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf party of ousted prime minister Imran Khan on Friday started a much-hyped protest march against what it calls the unconstitutional coalition government, setting up a potential showdown with security forces under orders to confront them decisively.
Former prime minister Khan earlier this week announced the launch of his much-trumpeted protest march on October 28 from the eastern city of Lahore to the capital Islamabad to force the government to call for early polls.
Thousands of people gathered in Lahore, from where a convoy began the journey to the capital, expected to take a week with rallies planned along the route.
At the protest rally, the PTI chief, launched an all-guns-blazing attack on the chief of the country’s top spy agency, ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence).
“DG ISI (ISI director-general Nadeem Ahmed Anjum) open your ears and listen, I know a lot of things but I am quiet only because I don’t want to harm my country … I do constructive criticism for betterment otherwise there is a lot I could say,” Khan said, addressing the rally in Lahore’s Liberty Chowk. “I could have exposed the ISI but refrained for the betterment of the country.”
PTI chief’s reaction comes a day after ISI chief Lt General Anjum alleged that army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa was offered an ‘indefinite extension’ in tenure in March by the then government, ahead of the Pakistan Democratic Movement-led no confidence vote in the parliament.
“In March, General Bajwa was given a lucrative offer for an indefinite extension in his tenure,” Anjum told an unprecedented media briefing in Islamabad.
Earlier, Khan, in a video message, said the march was not for “personal or political” interests but to attain actual freedom for the country. “The march’s purpose is to ensure that the country’s decisions are made within instead by foreign puppets.”
The ousted prime minister said the protest march would be peaceful. “We are not going to break the law or go into the Red Zone. Whatever will happen in Islamabad, it will be according to what the courts have permitted us,” he said.
The coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has already said protestors will be barred from entering Islamabad and they expect to deploy about 30,000 law enforcement officers to encircle the capital. Authorities have already sent hundreds of containers into Islamabad to barricade all entry points before the protestors arrived.
Khan, who was ousted in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence in April, has since held rallies around the country to pressurize the government to announce early elections. Sharif has rejected his demand, saying elections will be held on time in late 2023.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said the government will take strict action if the protest — ‘Haqeeqi Azadi’ — march’s participants create a law and order situation in the capital. “If protesters abide by the law, we will facilitate them,” minister Sanaullah said.
Sanaullah’s ministry issued an office order ahead of the PTI’s long march, barring government employees from participating in the protest march. The order said that “any deviation from the Constitution and laws of the land shall not be allowed at any cost”.
“… civil servants are bound to act as servants of the state and their actions should be subservient to the relevant constitutional provisions to ensure smooth conduct of relations between the federation and the provinces”.
“There should be a defined way of carrying out protests as enshrined in the Constitution and enunciated in various judgments of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It is equally important to ensure that no government employee be allowed to join any such protest.”
Senior PTI leaders have made appeals to people to come out in large numbers if they want actual change in the country.
Former ministers Fawad Chaudhry and Asad Umar at a media briefing said: “You should take part in this march even if you do not belong to the PTI. The nation must reject decisions taken behind closed doors.”
Chaudhry said the future of Pakistan was dependent on the success and failure of today’s march. “If this movement fails, then the nation will fail.”
The planned protest march is Khan’s second major rally, after the first one in May, which was abruptly called off at the last minute after his party workers had already arrived in the federal capital.
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