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Former Pakistan PM Imran Khan: Army Stole Election Mandate, But Ready For Dialogue

Former Pakistan PM

“Let it be known that if anything happens to me or my wife, it’ll be him who is responsible.”

From his prison cell in Adiala, Rawalpindi, former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan talking to journalists, pointed the finger at Army Chief Gen Asim Munir, as being responsible for his predicament.

“The army chief … didn’t come to that position through elections. I want to tell Gen Munir, there’s one plan that a human makes and there’s a plan made by Allah. And ultimately only Allah’s plans prevail,” the ousted former Pakistan prime minister warned in a post on X.

He reiterated the point that his party’s mandate had been stolen in the same manner that 50 years ago, Gen Yahya Khan, then Pakistan’s chief martial law administrator, stole the election that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had won in East Pakistan (later Bangladesh).

“Now the King (Munir) is covertly handling affairs while Mohsin Naqvi (Interior Minister) is operating as viceroy. Shahbaz Sharif commands no power. An economic catastrophe is imminent.”

But the former prime minister also acknowledged that some of his party leaders “are still in contact with the establishment”, and that he was always ready for a dialogue.

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The Dawn paper reported him saying that if he could talk to former army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa, who was responsible for his downfall in April 2022, he could talk to anybody as the country was passing through a difficult phase.

He accused Gen Munir of implicating “Me and my wife in the Tosha Khana reference in an attempt to stifle my spirits. The entire nation is aware that Gen Munir is driving the state of affairs”.

He said the “London Plan”, actually the plot to oust him as prime minister, involved the army chief and Nawaz Sharif, head of the PML-N, whose brother is now prime minister. It also involved judges brought in by the ISI.

“In the current situation the judiciary is not independent at all,” he said.

He claimed there was a plot to assassinate him last month at the Judicial Complex which had been taken over by men in plain clothes. He demanded that the CCTV footage of that day be made public.