LARKANA: Pakistan Peo-ples Party’s Senator Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has said that Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan aims to influence general election by stressing on ‘premature’ polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.

Khuhro said in a press statement issued here on Wednesday how would it be possible to hold election for two provincial assemblies before time and that of National Assembly and two other provincial assemblies later.

If premature elections were held in KP and Punjab what would be the fate of both the assemblies when general election would be due after a few months. Would the new assemblies be dissolved again before general election, he asked, adding nation was anxiously waiting for the answer to this query.

He said that it would be tantamount to putting the cart before the horse. PPP stood by the constitution and believed it was the job of Election Commission of Pakistan to hold election.

If the question of premature polls of KP and Punjab remained unanswered on the pretext of prevailing economic conditions, the matter would then definitely go to Supreme Court, which might find out some solution to it.

He called for holding general election for national and provincial assemblies simultaneously after the parliament completed its term. The election should be held in the presence of a caretaker set-up and the party which wielded majority should be handed over power in a transparent manner, he said.

Kuhuro, who was also president of PPP Sindh, called the demand for premature polls an attack on politics and said Imran Khan wanted to weaken the country with such demand.

He said the country could not afford Imran Khan’s conspiracies and all political forces would definitely thwart his machinations. Neither Imran Khan nor any PTI leader was talking about rectifying the national economy’s ills, they were reluctant to attend all party conference and were not ready to initiate talks on charter of economy, he said.

Those talking about courting arrest were sitting in houses of glass and now the PTI was worried about even the workers who were willing to join the jail bharo tehreek. In the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, leaders took the lead in courting arrest and in case of Imran Khan, his announcement had turned out to be just a lip service, he said.

He said that leaders should be in forefront in such campaigns and foresaw that the jail bharo tehreek would prove to be another U-turn. Imran Khan was banking on Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s advice when he waved a purported letter had spun the American conspiracy narrative, he said that Imran Khan should expel the man who had trapped him in the untrue cipher story.

Khuhro warned if Imran Khan continued relying on Qureshi’s advice, it would be the end of his politics and advised him to stop hatching conspiracies against the country and seek pardon from nation for creating unrest.

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2023