LAHORE      -       Speaking in the context of senior party leaders’ alleged persecution at the hands of the state institutions, Chairman PTI Imran Khan Wednesday urged the judiciary to protect the fundamental rights of the party men in a situation when the country had become a “banana republic” operating on the principle of “might is right”.In a televised press conference on Wednesday, Imran Khan vowed that he would fight till the last ball and would not accept being subservient to an imported regime.

Addressing the judges of the superior judiciary, Imran Khan said that they had been entrusted with the responsibility of upholding rule of law and should play their role to get the country out of the prevailing uncertain situation.

The PTI chairman urged the judiciary, judges and legal fraternity to stand for the rule of law in Pakistan. Imran said that he expected the judiciary to protect the fundamental rights of the PTI people. “Given the kinds of verdicts being given and how the Constitution and laws are being torn apart, there is no future for such a country,” he observed. He also questioned what was the crime of Fawad Chaudhry. “Is it a crime to call the election commissioner a munshi (clerk)?” he asked.

Condemning Fawad’s arrest, Khan said no one should be arrested for expressing their thoughts in a democracy. He said the government only wanted to silence the voices who speak against it.

He alleged that Interim Chief Minister Punjab was backing such actions against the PTI. Imran Khan asserted that the ECP was responsible for holding free and fair elections in the country. He reiterated that ECP had appointed a media person Mohsin Naqvi as the caretaker chief minister of Punjab who was a key player in the regime change conspiracy against his government.

Imran Khan said that Naqvi reshuffled the Punjab bureaucracy to hold Karachi-like polls, where PPP had no vote bank but won the LG elections as it was a part of the grand plan. However, Khan vowed that he would take legal action against Naqvi’s appointment.

Khan urged his party supporters to stop fearing jails, trials and tribulations and unite against the imported government, which, he said, was hellbent on taking country towards destruction and chaos.

About the disintegration of the joint investigation team (JIT) investigating the gun attack in Wazirabad, PTI Chairman said that that JIT members were pressured to drop the investigation because it would have established the conspiracy for assassinating him.

He said that the Punjab interim CM and the PML-N were bent upon sabotaging the JIT and questioned why such a move had been made. Hinting that “powerful” forces were out to get him and were involved in his attack, Khan said: “DPO Gujrat Ghazanfar Hussain and SSP Nadeem Hussain, made a video of Naveed, but when the JIT called the two officers and asked for the mobile phone used to make the recording, they flatly refused.I want to know who was behind these two officers?”

Imran Khan went on to say that he could only hope for any justice in the matter if the JIT had been formed under the supervision of the chief justice himself. However, he said: “I have no hope for justice if those who I believed were involved in the attack — Rana Sanaullah and Shehbaz Sharif —are sitting in the federal government.”

Lashing out at the governors of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) for not setting a date for the elections, which he said was a violation of the Constitution.

The former premier also slammed those who wanted the elections to be pushed forward and said “it is written in the Constitution” that elections must be held within 90 days of the dissolution of the assembly. “If there is a Constitution and law in this country, the election cannot go beyond 90 days,” he added.

He further stated that that an institution did not realize that the country’s sovereignty would be compromised if it became economically weak and cited examples of Sri Lanka and Egypt how the government of both countries had to accede to the orders of International Monetary Fund (IMF) regarding armed forces.

He wondered how the institutions could back cabal of crooks after a regime change conspiracy.

Khan urged the nation to take their destiny in their own hands and struggle for a better Pakistan. Imran Khan maintained that such oppressive tactics cannot force him to accept a government led by crooks and thieves and that he will fight such people till his last breath, as he was neither afraid of dying nor going to jail.

Khan said that he had given 26 years of his life to fight against such politicians, loot poor people of Pakistan and stash their wealth abroad so that they could flee the country when needed, because they had no stake in the country.

The PTI chairman made it clear that such leadership whose interests were abroad cannot take the country towards progress but kept the country and nation enslaved to their foreign masters.

The PTI chief said that his struggle was for justice and rule of law while the current government wanted to bring in the law of the jungle in Pakistan.