September 9, 2022
By Shaukat Korai
KARACHI
The former Prime Minister and Chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan still has the backing of the country’s military-controlled establishment, said Ali Wazir, elected member of the National Assembly who has been languishing in prison for over two years in sedition cases. He said this in an exclusive interview with Voicepk, on Thursday, during his appearance in court.
“The narrative Imran Khan espouses in his speeches cannot come about without the support of the military,” said Wazir in his court appearance for bail in one of the several sedition cases registered against him. “Ninety per cent of the military’s establishment still backs Imran Khan,” he said while responding to a question about his opinion on the recent statements made by the PTI chief.
Despite his long imprisonment, Wazir added that it had failed to dent his spirit in the least.
“A person becomes weak if he believes in a weak ideology, I am proud to say that our idealogy believes in humanity,” he said.
While the Sindh government is not the complainant in the slew of sedition cases against him, when asked about who was behind these cases, Ali Wazir replied: “It is all out in the open now, state institutions are now publicly showing their interference in matters relating to the political and military affairs in the country.”
The lower house parliamentarian affiliated with Pashtun Tuhaffaz Movement (PTM) said the establishment’ was calling out PTI in a similar fashion to people it viewed as anti-state. “We used to be called traitors but now they are saying the same to the so-called children they themselves nurtured,” he said.
Ali Wazir said their movement desired that the state institutions and individuals should follow the law of the land. “In regard to rights, you will see injustice committed on oppressed communities and humanity,” he said. “There are certain politicians and the military that wanted to keep the State under their writ at all times regardless of the Constitution and the law.”
He said everything in the country has been turned into a business- war and politics included. “What we are saying is that the institutions and the State should remain such as envisioned in the Constitution and the law.”
“I cannot say for sure in which direction is the country headed as I am incarcerated in prison,” Ali Wazir said in reply to a question about the future course of political events in the country.
