ISLAMABAD: Imran Khan on Friday stated that his wife Bushra Bibi’s statement a day earlier was deliberately taken out of context to draw “our brotherly country KSA” into a needless controversy as she didn’t mention Saudi Arabia at all.

Other PTI leaders also regretted her statement’s negative characterisation.

In a post on X, the ex-prime minister maintained that Bushra Bibi had no connection with politics and she had only conveyed his message to the masses regarding the party’s Nov 24 protest.

“I have excellent relations with Saudi Arabia. When I was attacked in Wazirabad, one of the first calls I received was, through the embassy from HRH Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi Arabia has always stood by us in difficult times,” he wrote.

The PTI’s founding chairman recalled that “only two weeks prior to our government being toppled, we held a very successful OIC foreign ministers’ conference in Islamabad, which would have been impossible to do had Saudi Arabia not supported and stood with us”.

Mr Khan claimed that his government was toppled through conspiracies, all orchestrated by then-army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and that he had tried to have those [conspiracies] investigated through the then chief justice and Gen Tariq Khan, but Gen Bajwa did not allow that to happen.

KP government spokesperson Barrister Mohammed Ali Saif said Bushra Bibi did not say Gen Bajwa was called by the Saudi Crown Prince or the [Saudi] government, and did not make any accusations against them.

“Mohammed bin Salman and Imran Khan have an ideal relationship which the fake government is trying to damage.”

Mr Saif alleged that the purpose of “exaggerating Bushra Bibi’s statement” was to divert attention from the Nov 24 protest.

In a post on X, party Information Secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram said PTI viewed the relationship with Saudi Arabia with great respect and dignity and wanted to further expand on the “brotherly and friendly” relations.

“Bushra Bibi did not directly or indirectly name the leadership or government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in her message, nor is there any possibility of doing so.

“Rather, she pointed to the characters whose chief was General Qamar Javed Bajwa who were active against an elected democratic government internally and externally and who created an environment…at the local and international levels to pave the way for the regime change project,” Mr Akram said.

He said PTI condemned the attempt by the “mandate-thief government”, which is afraid of PTI’s nationwide protests on Nov 24, to use the brotherly Islamic country as a source of baseless rumours in view of nefarious political goals.

“The only aim of the efforts to distort a specific part of the video message of Imran’s wife and to create a narrative on the media and social media based on it at the expense of state resources is to support their declining reputation and government by putting Pakistan’s diplomatic interests at stake,” he alleged.

He said the campaign against Bushra Bibi was “nothing new”, alleging that not only had the government been previously making her a target of accusations but it had also “woven a web of false cases against her, out of which her innocence has been proven in court in all major cases”.

Another PTI leader Raoof Hassan said during a TV show that conspiracies had started against Imran Khan since he landed in Saudi Arabia barefooted.

It may be recalled that Bushra Bibi on Thursday claimed that some foreign powers were unhappy over Imran Khan’s religious posture of walking barefoot in Madina. She said that after the ex-PM returned home, then-army chief Bajwa had begun receiving calls of disapproval. She didn’t specify who made the calls.

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2024