By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Former minister Shireen Mazari quit active politics on Tuesday, becoming the most senior member in a long line of aides to abandon the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which is embroiled in a confrontation with the powerful military.
The 72-year-old is among several members of former prime minister Imran Khan’s PTI party who were arrested after angry mobs attacked military installations, set fire to government buildings, and smashed buses to protest the party chief’s detention on corruption charges on May 9. The party says more than 7,000 of its supporters have been arrested during the crackdown.
Mazari has been a vocal critic of the military’s involvement in politics and the coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. She was arrested for the fourth time on Monday, hours after a court ordered her release. The Khan aide, first arrested on May 12, was subsequently nabbed by police on May 16 and May 18 despite court orders calling her arrest illegal.
Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon, Mazari said she was quitting active politics for health reasons. She did not elaborate.
“I have decided to leave active politics and I will not be a part of PTI or any political party from today,” Mazari said.
Mazari, who also denounced the recent violence by Khan’s supporters, is among several leaders from Khan’s party who have quit him because of the deadly protests.
The 72-year-old veteran, who was flanked by her daughter at the presser, said she would be focusing more on her health, children and her mother.
“My children and my mother are my priority and because of that my health is my priority too,” she said. “There is nothing more important except for that.”
Also on Tuesday, Fayyazul Hassan Chohan, another key leader in Khan’s party in central Punjab province, said at a news conference in Islamabad he is quitting the party over Khan’s “politics of confrontation with the state and the military.” More than a dozen current and former PTI lawmakers, including Aamir Kiani, Sanjay Gangwani and Mahmood Baqi Maulvi, have quit the party since the crackdown began.
Several prominent PTI figures, including Asad Umar, Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, Maleeka Bokhari and Shah Mahmood Qureshi, remain behind the bars as authorities go on to arrest party leaders and supporters for violence, amid heightened tensions between Khan and Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, which has vowed to try the May 9 rioters under military laws.
Qureshi, the former foreign affairs minister, and vice-chairman of Khan’s PTI, was arrested again on Tuesday, moments after being released from a prison in Rawalpindi on the orders of a top court.
The Islamabad High Court ordered Qureshi’s release after he submitted an undertaking affirming that he would abstain from creating agitation and inciting workers.
However, moments after his release from Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail, Punjab Police re-arrested the former minister.
Khan, who has been calling for snap elections since his ouster from office last year, has accused the government of initiating the crackdown against his supporters to “crush” the PTI ahead of the upcoming general elections, a charge the government denies.
Taking to his Twitter handle, Khan said that a new phenomenon of “forced divorces” has emerged for PTI.
“We had all heard about forced marriages in Pakistan but for PTI a new phenomenon has emerged, forced divorces. Also wondering where have all the human rights organizations in the country disappeared,” he tweeted.
While leaving the party, the leaders have majorly cited PTI’s “policy of violence” as the reason behind their decision.
Earlier on May 18, Khan in a tweet stated, “My sympathies go to all those who under pressure have been made to leave the party. And I commend and salute all the senior members who are resisting the extreme pressure to quit the party. The nation will always remember them for standing up for Haqeeqi Azaadi.”
Khan, facing more than 100 cases ranging from corruption to terrorism, said he sympathises will everyone who was pressurised to leave the party.
An anti-terrorism court on Tuesday granted Khan bail till June 8 in eight cases related to violence that erupted at the Judicial Complex in March.
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