ISLAMABAD - The beleaguered Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Wednesday urged the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa to fix the long-pending petitions of the party regarding May 9 riots, and February 8 “mega polls fraud” without any further delay to bring the truth before the nation.
“It is mentioned nowhere in the constitution to put the most important petitions under the carpet and just focus on trivial matters and unnecessary petitions on his own choice,” said PTI Information Secretary Raoof Hasan while addressing a press conference here at the party’s Central Secretariat. He urged the chief justice to also fix the party’s pending review petition on the apex court verdict depriving it of the election symbol ‘bat’.
He expressed dismay that several letters were written to the CJP to provide a level playing field to the party in general polls but all had gone unheard.
Referring to the case of reserved seats of Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) being heard by the 13-member SC bench, Raoof said that Chief Justice Isa repeatedly raised questions during the court proceeding regarding PTI’s intra-party elections, reminding him that the party conducted three polls including one under the apex court guidelines.
He said that instead of criticising the PTI, the SC should take the blame, as the party was completely deprived of a level playing field during general elections. He recalled that the party’s candidates, their proposers and seconders were detained and threatened. “The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) was complicit in all these acts, as the conduct of the chief election commissioner is suspicious from day one,” he said. The information secretary asserted that they were told to respect the constitutional body and asked whether the electoral body that conducted “fraudulent election deserved any respect,” as all civil society organizations, Commonwealth, European Union and US Congress were unanimous on the point that mega polls robbery took place on February 8.
Raoof said that the US Congress passed a damning resolution with overwhelming majority and raised five serious questions pertaining to credibility and transparency of the February 8 general elections.
He mentioned that the US House of Representatives expressed robust support for democracy in Pakistan by an overwhelming 368-7 vote and condemned efforts to suppress democratic participation in the country specifically it denounced harassment, intimidation, violence, arbitrary detentions, and restrictions on internet access, as well as any violations of human, civil, or political rights.
He asked that CJP should ever ask about the whereabouts of the Commissioner Rawalpindi Liaquat Ali Chatha who spelt the beans and “exposed the reality of the mother of all rigged polls before the nation.”
He claimed that de facto martial law was imposed in Pakistan, adding that the Chinese delegation also raised questions about political instability in the country.
Raoof criticised CJP for not taking notice of statements of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leaders including Ahsan Iqbal and Rana Sanaullah that they would make all-out efforts to keep PTI chief Imran Khan in jail “unlawfully and unjustifiably.”
Talking about the government’s plan to launch counterterrorism operation ‘Azm-i-Istehkam’, Raoof categorically stated that PTI would not allow any operation in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), saying the people of the province had already suffered enormously in war against terrorism.
He emphasized that the PTI wanted to eliminate terrorism and was ready to cooperate but any such decision should be taken after taking onboard people and the government of the respective province.
The party leader alleged that the government’s priority was not to root out terrorism but to crush the PTI, as seemingly they wanted to achieve political goals, demanding the power circles and power-wielders to revisit their policies and approaches.
