ISLAMABAD: Lawmakers belonging to former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party on Wednesday continued their hunger strike to demand his release from prison, vowing to “take on” the government’s plan to ban the party.
Over two dozen PTI lawmakers, including the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Omar Ayub, have been holding a hunger strike outside the Parliament House in Islamabad since Tuesday to press for Khan’s release from prison.
Khan has been in jail since August last year, even though all four convictions handed down to him ahead of a parliamentary election in February have either been suspended or overturned.
After being acquitted on the last of those four convictions, authorities rearrested Khan and his wife in an old corruption case on charges of selling state gifts unlawfully. He also faces an accusation of inciting his supporters to attack military installations in May last year. Khan denies all the accusations.
The hunger strike also takes place after Information Minister Ataullah Tarar announced on July 15 that the government plans to ban the PTI over the “proven” charge that the party received foreign funds from sources illegal in Pakistan, and because of rioting by its supporters last year that targeted military installations.
“I think that we have to just laugh it off,” Ayub told Arab News from the PTI’s hunger strike camp, reacting to the government’s announcement to ban the party.
He was sitting with other lawmakers of the party who held Khan’s portraits and placards inscribed with the words “Release Imran Khan.”
“They [the government] can’t beat us in the political arena, so they have resorted to this,” Ayub added. “We will take them on.”
The government’s announcement to ban the PTI came following the Supreme Court’s recent verdict in which it accepted the PTI as a legitimate political party and awarded it reserved seats for women and minorities in parliament. The verdict was a blow to the Shehbaz Sharif-led coalition government, causing it to lose its two-thirds majority in Pakistan’s parliament.
Ayub said the PTI had organized the hunger strike to not only demand Khan’s and his wife’s release from prison but also to protest against soaring inflation and militancy in the country.
“This hunger strike is geared toward or targeted toward getting Prime Minister Imran Khan, his wife and first lady Bushra Bibi and all our politically imprisoned prisoners who were imprisoned because of their political beliefs of supporting Prime Minister Imran Khan,” he said.
He described the government as an “illegal” one, holding it responsible for rising inflation and militancy in the country. Ayub called for fresh elections to overcome these crises.
“This is a token hunger strike, and we will continue this as long as is necessary,” he vowed.
‘DRAMA’
Meanwhile Senator Talal Chaudhry, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, described the PTI’s hunger strike as a “drama.”
He accused the PTI of always conspiring to weaken the country, saying that the party was always protesting whether through hunger strikes or “conspiracies to shut down Pakistan.”
“They will not get anything through these strikes,” he said. “What sort of a hunger strike is this that it begins after lunch and ends before the evening tea?“
The rise in tensions between the government and the PTI takes place after police raided the headquarters of Khan’s party in Islamabad earlier this week.
The PTI’s senior media manager Ahmed Waqas Janjua and its information secretary Raoof Hassan were arrested by authorities on accusations they were pushing an “anti-state narrative” to undermine Pakistan’s sovereignty.
“The recent crackdown is because the government has lost all, I would say, legitimacy in the eyes of the people,” Ayub said. “They don’t have anything to offer.”
