PM Khan promises ‘sea of people’ in front of parliament a day before no-trust vote

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday promised to gather “a sea of people” in front of the parliament building in Islamabad one day ahead of the no-trust voting against him at the National Assembly while addressing a public rally in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Lower Dir region.
The opposition submitted a no-confidence motion against Khan earlier this week while hoping to bring down his administration and take the country toward fresh general elections.
The prime minister held meetings with his coalition partners soon after the development, though his senior cabinet members maintained the government still had the majority in the house.
Addressing the gathering on Friday, the prime minister bitterly criticized top opposition leaders while saying they had plundered the country and stashed all their wealth abroad.
“The whole nation will witness a sea of people on D-Chowk [facing the parliament building] one day ahead of the no-confidence session,” he told a roaring crowd of his party followers.
While the no-trust motion has been initiated against the prime minister, the National Assembly session to process it has not been announced yet.
Referring to the heads of three opposition parties — the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Jamiat-e-Ulama-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) — that filed the no-confidence motion, he said: “The reason why I am asking people to come out ahead of the no-trust voting is to show these three stooges that this nation is still alive.”
Khan added the people of Pakistan were capable of distinguishing between good and evil.
He even went on to say that he was praying to God for the opposition to bring the no-trust motion against him.
“Now I can make all three wickets fall with a single bowl,” the prime minister, a former cricket great, said amid a huge round of applause.
Responding to his speech, president of the opposition Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) alliance Maulana Fazlur Rehman asked the election commission how the prime minister could hold such public rallies when a no-confidence motion had been filed against him.
“He used to say ideal things [ahead of the last general elections],” he told a news conference in Islamabad. “Now his narrative is not going to work since he has been tried and exposed.”
Rehman also criticized the prime minister for using “coarse language” against him and other opposition leaders, saying a man like Khan did not deserve to be the prime minister of the country.