ISLAMABAD - Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has said his party will move the Supreme Court before taking to the streets if the Election Commission does not take action on the reference against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
The PTI moved the election commission against the PM for ‘concealing his foreign assets’.
“The PTI will continue taking up the Panama Leaks with the parliament. Demos on roads would be the last option.” Khan said while addressing a press conference at his residence in Banigala yesterday.
He was hopeless of the talks with the government over ToRs, saying, “We are trying to resolve the issue through legal means and as a democratic party we have a right for peaceful protest.”
He termed the reference an ‘open-and-shut-case’ but at the same, he doubted the credibility of ECP, saying: “It is PML-N’s ECP.”
He said: “The election commission has been damaging democracy. The judicial commission gave 40 findings against it but to no avail.” He said he could not find answer to why the ECP allowed Nawaz to contest the 2013 general elections, though he (Nawaz) had defaulted Rs6 billion.
He said the Sharif family was facing NAB 13 cases but nobody dared investigate these. The ECP recently disqualified legislator Rai Hassan Nawaz for cancelling his assets. The case of the PM is similar to that, he cited.
Khan was unhappy with the government over Panama probe ToRs. “The government is trying to save Nawaz. But the PTI is attempting to bring him to justice,” he said.
“The government didn’t respond positively on the PTI’s request for opening just four constituencies on the issue of rigging in the general election. Then we took to the streets… the situation now is very much similar,” he said.
About a question on the Rs300 million allocation for a KP religious seminary, he said the decision was “a step forward to reform madrasas across the country, where 2.2 million students were enrolled”.
Khan said PML-N was not a democratic party. “Had it been a democratic party, someone other than Nawaz would have been prime minster of the country,”
He said Maryam Nawaz, who is ‘dependent’ on her father, owns property in the UK. He questioned as to how a dependent can buy such an expensive property.
To a question about alliance with the PPP, the PTI chief said they were not going to form an electoral alliance. “We are with any political party that wants accountability of the rulers. It is a one-point agenda.”