ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman and former premier Imran Khan on Wednesday reiterated his claims of the alleged “American conspiracy” behind his ouster, saying the “traitors and thieves” were imposed upon the country for continuation of the “slavery”.

Addressing his party workers’ convention, the PTI chairman said he would address a “historic” public gathering in the capital city on Saturday (July 2, 2022) and asked the party workers to go door-to-door to persuade the people of the twin cities to attend the PTI Jalsa.

“Why are we going to hold a historic public meeting? Because the primary reason is that the “traitors”, together with the United States, toppled an elected government through a conspiracy. Second, they imposed such people through this government who were involved in theft for the last 30 years,” he maintained.

Khan dubbed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as the “Crime Minister” and alleged that he and his sons are facing Rs24 billion corruption cases – Rs8 billion in the NAB and Rs16 billion in the FIA. He further maintained that those associated with the cases, including a person namely Maqsood and other witnesses well as and the key investigator Dr Rizwan died under mysterious circumstances.

“They imposed thieves upon us. If you want to destroy a country, it does not need an aggression by foreign powers, but impose robbers and plunders on the people and the country would destroy eventually,” he further maintained, adding it was the second part of the “conspiracy” who were imposed upon the people by the US.

“Remember it. The US did not impose them on us for our betterment, but brought these ‘thieves’ just for the sake of continuation of this ‘slavery’. Soon after coming into power, these American ‘slaves’ and corrupts closed all their corruption cases against them,” he alleged, adding the prime minister brought the NAB and the FIA under him. He further alleged that they closed Rs1,100 billion corruption cases against themselves.

Strongly criticizing the government for the sky-rocketing inflation, he said the “imported government” had already doubled the prices of items of essential use, and the prices would continue to rise further in the days to come.

He further stated that his government was also facing the IMF pressure, but they did now allow to burden the masses by increasing prices of petroleum, gas, and electricity.

The PTI chairman also claimed Punjab Chief Minister Hamza Shehbaz would cease to be the chief minister, adding that Punjab government was taking measures to rig the forthcoming by-polls in the province.

He also criticized the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and maintained that its “so-called impartial” role had been exposed badly.

Khan also lambasted Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Mualana Fazlur Rehman, saying that whenever there was a hard time he used to go for performing Umrah.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022