Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Monday announced protests across Punjab from today (Tuesday) against the appointment of Mohsin Naqvi as the province’s caretaker chief minister, alleging that the media mogul is ‘biased’ against his party.
In a televised address, the ousted prime minister claimed that during his time as prime minister, the man “who tried the most to topple the PTI government” was Mohsin Naqvi. “The Intelligence Bureau also gave a report on his activities,” he claimed, adding that Naqvi had played a “key role” in the “regime change” conspiracy against his government. Stressing that the new chief minister had strong links with Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and had been accused of corruption, he reiterated that he has unsuitable for the role of caretaker chief minister.
“What would be the reputation of a man that Zardari describes as his son? Naqvi neither possesses the moral standards nor the impartiality [for a caretaker chief minister],” he said, as he slammed the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for picking the media mogul to head Punjab’s government. “The standards of our democracy have degraded so much that no one trusts the government to conduct transparent elections. The basic reason behind a caretaker government is its neutrality,” he said, lamenting that the names proposed by the PTI and Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) for the post were all rejected.
“We chose Nasir Khosa’s name thinking they will like it; Ahmed Sukhera was the cabinet secretary at the time, we thought there wouldn’t be an objection to him too; Naveed Akram Cheema was also [Prime Minister] Shehbaz Sharif’s secretary. But they rejected all our names,” he said, despite Khosa recusing himself from the role and Sukhera being ineligible as he has yet to retire from government service.
He said the PTI would raise its objections to Naqvi’s appointment through protest demonstrations in Lahore and Rawalpindi on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, adding that subsequent protests would also take place in Faisalabad, Multan and other cities. “Protest demonstrations will be staged in different cities daily,” he said. “We do not accept Mohsin Naqvi as caretaker chief minister.”
Taking aim at the ECP once more, he questioned why no date for elections had been announced after the dissolution of the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa assemblies. This, he claimed, was all part of an “agenda” to sideline the PTI and himself from politics. “Every decision of this ECP comes against us [PTI],” he claimed, reiterating claims of the Toshakhana case as being a “joke”
Demanding that elections be held before the start of Ramzan—set to begin in the last week of March—he said the party would soon move the Supreme Court over both the appointment of Naqvi and a date for elections.
“Just like in Karachi, the thieves want to be imposed on the country through the rigging,” he said, referring to the local government elections that the PTI claims were rigged. To defeat these “thieves,” he said, the masses should take to the streets in protest.
Emphasizing that the country suffered every time politicians were “unlawfully” targeted, he said the country had “broken” when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was targeted; the MQM was formed when the PPP was targeted; and Balochistan had suffered since Nawab Akbar Bugti was targeted.