ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has summoned rallies in the Pakistani cities of Peshawar, Karachi and Lahore, in an attempt to mobilize the masses for a snap election in the South Asian country. 

Khan resigned as a member of the National Assembly on Monday, a day after his ouster from the country’s top political office in a no-confidence vote. The former PM says the new government of Shehbaz Sharif is “imported” and was brought to power through a foreign conspiracy orchestrated by the United States. Washington has denied the accusations. 

On Tuesday, the cricket star-turned-politician called supporters to his first anti-government rally in Peshawar tomorrow, Wednesday, saying they must campaign to ensure that fresh elections were “immediately” announced. 

“The biggest message I will give my nation from Peshawar is that you have to protect your independence, your democracy yourself, no one else can do it, no army can do it,” Khan said in a video message. “We have to run a complete campaign that elections should be held immediately in Pakistan.” 

Shafqat Mahmood, a former minister and a member of Khan’s PTI, said his party had planned rallies in Karachi and Lahore as well. 

“Tomorrow there is a rally in Peshawar. On the 16th [April], there is a rally at Quaid-e-Azam’s mausoleum in Karachi,” Mahmood told reporters in Lahore. 

“And, I want to tell this good news to my fellows in Punjab and Lahore that, God willing, a rally will be held at Minar-e-Pakistan on the 23rd.” 

Khan led months-long anti-government demonstrations in August 2014, with his supporters flooding the center of Pakistan’s capital and vowing to stay in the streets until then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resigned. He called off the protests nearly four months later only after a Taliban assault on a school in Peshawar in which at least 132 students and nine staff members were killed. 

“On Wednesday I will be holding a jalsa [public rally] in Peshawar after Isha [evening prayers] — my first jalsa after being removed through a foreign-instigated regime change,” Khan said in a Twitter post on Monday. “I want all our people to come, as Pakistan was created as an independent, sovereign state not as a puppet state of foreign powers.” 

“We are demanding immediate elections as that is the only way forward — to let the people decide, through fair & free elections, whom they want as their prime minister,” he added. 

The National Assembly of Pakistan elected the former leader of the opposition, Shehbaz Sharif, as the country’s new prime minister on Monday. Khan’s PTI party resigned en masse before Sharif’s election.