RAWALPINDI: Responding to the media talk by Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah in which he threatened him and PTI leaders with consequences if they did not assure the government that their long march towards Islamabad would be peaceful, his predecessor Sheikh Rashid on Saturday asked him to go ahead with the crackdown he had threatened since that was not going to dampen the spirits of the marchers.

Speaking to the media outside Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court, he said while addressing Sanaullah, “Look at your ugly face. You have the cheek to threaten us.”

“What we need today is an announcement for early elections,” Rasheed said, adding that otherwise he foresaw situation in the country going from bad to worse. He said that the present coalition government was registering false cases against him and PTI leaders.

Referring to PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz’s speech which she delivered at a public gathering in Fateh Jang, Attock yesterday, Rasheed said there she again pointed fingers at the ‘establishment’.

“She repeatedly mentioned General Faiz’s name in her speech,” former minister said, adding that appeared to be the commencement of the PML-N’s same old practice of calling ‘establishment’ names. “We, on the contrary, are proud of Pak Army,” he added.

He went on to add that ‘conspiracy’ by the international establishment had turned former prime minister and PTI chairman Imran Khan into a ‘hero’.