LAHORE     -    In the wake of a likely showdown between the government and the Su­preme Court on the is­sue of election date, Pa­kistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan Friday urged the people especially law­yer’s community to gird up their loins to launch a mass movement for what he called the pro­tection of the rule of law and democracy. 

“As the PML-N, scared of the elections, seems all-set to launch an at­tack on the Supreme Court and the Chief Jus­tice of Pakistan, I call upon the people, the lawyers’ community in particular, to be ready to come out on streets if the need be to save the rule of law, the Consti­tution and democracy,” the PTI chief said in a statement here. Imran Khan recalled that the PML-N had stormed the apex court in 1997 to at­tack the then Chief Justice of Pakistan Sajjad Ali Shah who was then hearing a contempt petition against Nawaz Sharif. “The PML-N is again threaten­ing SC and CJP today because it wanted to evade elections”, he added. Imran Khan said his party was willing to talk to all political parties who were prepared to stand up against this conspiracy [to subdue the judiciary]. “I appeal to law­yers’ community in particu­lar to take the lead again as they did in the lawyers’ move­ment of 2007 to protect Paki­stan’s Constitution and rule of law”, he said. Separate­ly, in a meeting with journal­ists at his Zaman Park resi­dence here, Imran Khan said that there would be no com­promise on the independence of the judiciary and the con­stitution. “Free and fair elec­tions are the solution to all problems and the PTI will go to every limit for democra­cy”, he stressed, adding that the entire nation would sup­port the lawyers’ movement if they came out on the roads. He said he was ready for ne­gotiations with all stakehold­ers within the framework of the Constitution and law.