UMERKOT: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf candidates for National and provincial assemblies in Umerkot and Tharparkar districts have said that ‘political engineers’ who have now turned into ‘election engineers’ are clearly afraid of Imran Khan’s ever rising popularity, therefore, his right hand man, Shah Mehmood Qureshi is arrested again and again.

The PTI candidates Lalchand Malhi, Lekhraj Malhi, Akbar Palli, Pehlaj Kolhi, Lajpat Bheel and others told this correspondent on Tuesday that injustice, brutal use of power and attempts by institutions to wall in the party would prove counter-productive. “Even after use of all tactics and forms of coercion, we are standing like a rock,” they said.

Lalchand Malhi, a candidate for NA-213, said that more than 200 cases had been registered against the party chairman who survived a murderous attack but he did not bow to fear or favor. Imran Khan and Qureshi refused to compromise on Kashmir issue, therefore their government was toppled under an international conspiracy, he said.

The political engineers had plunged the country into unending crises. The facilitators of the conspiracy, Pakistan Democratic Forum, had been thrust on the country on the pretext of high inflation and other economic crises but instead of controlling the inflation they increased it by 100 per cent. The GDP was six per cent under PTI rule which declined to below zero to minus under Shehbaz’s coalition government, he said.

He said the export and foreign remittances increased during PTI rule and poverty had declined to 13 per cent, which went up to 42 per cent under the PDM government. Imran Khan’s demands were real freedom, free, fair and transparent elections, independent judiciary and rule of law, he said.

He said that both Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz were in a race for winning over the establishment and were trying to prove themselves more loyal than the king.

He said that Pakistan had been rendered isolated on international level and world was making a mockery of the country for unjustified, unethical, undemocratic tactics being used against a political party. “We are contesting as independent candidates but our nomination papers still carry the party name as PTI,” he said.

“If a candidate suddenly announced his withdrawal or started talking against the leadership he must be treated as ‘abducted’ and under duress,” he said. He said that they had been deprived of the party symbol but now Imran Khan is their symbol. “Our leader has not a single charge of corruption while the PPP’s very symbol is corruption, which is Mr Zardari,” he said.

He believed that the candidates would rejoin PTI after victory and then reserved seats would be allotted back to the party as per its ratio.

He said that the ‘political engineers’ who had now transformed into ‘election engineers’ were afraid of Imran Khan’s rising popularity. Therefore, Shah Mehmood Qureshi was arrested again and again, which had greatly angered his disciples, he said.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2024