In a veiled attack, Imran Khan blames Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa for his ouster
Lahore, April 21
In a veiled attack on Pakistan’s Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, former prime minister Imran Khan has alleged that “some elements” in the powerful establishment who indulged in “bad practices” were responsible for his unceremonious ouster from power.
According to experts, Khan, who was ousted from power on April 10 after the National Assembly passed a no-confidence motion against him, had apparently lost support of the Army after he refused to endorse the appointment of the ISI spy agency chief last year. Finally, he agreed but it soured his ties with the Army.
Addressing party workers on Twitter at night, Imran said: “There are also humans in institutions. If one or two individuals do something wrong, the entire institution is not responsible. If one person (in an apparent reference to Army chief General Bajwa) makes a mistake, this does not mean that the whole institution is at fault.”
Former information minister Fawad Chaudhry told a news channel on Wednesday that relations between the establishment and Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had strained for months.
Khan, 69, is the only Pakistani prime minister to be ousted in a no-confidence motion in Parliament. He was replaced by Shehbaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N).
He called on his supporters to reach Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore on Thursday to make it the biggest-ever rally in the country’s history.
The cricketer-turned-politician said that all institutions are not corrupt but some “elements indulge in bad practices”.
Khan, in the same breath, praised the Army, saying “Pakistan needs the Armed forces more than Imran Khan. Had the strong Army not been here, Pakistan might have been dismembered into three pieces.”
Khan said that his party lawmakers turned against him when they were not allowed to carry on with “corruption”, in a reference to the Jahangir Tareen and Aleem Khan groups that left him.
On the possible return of three-time premier and PML-N supreme leader Nawaz Sharif in the wake of his party’s return to power, Imran said: “If Nawaz Sharif comes back and gets another ‘NRO’ (National Reconciliation Ordinance deal), it will make a mockery of the justice system in Pakistan.”
