LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan on Wednesday held meetings with the central Punjab districts’ party leaders and asked them to complete preparations as he is all set to make a final call for the “Haqeeqi Azadi” movement.

The party’s long march will be a “jihad” against oppression, he said.

Mr Khan also held a meeting with the senior party leaders and provincial ministers and discussed plan for long march on Islamabad as well as potential threats that the PML-N-led government could pose to the protesters.

In meetings with the party presidents and general secretaries of all towns, tehsils and districts in Gujranwala, Sahiwal, Gujrat and Lahore divisions, Mr Khan, along with central Punjab president Dr Yasmin Rashid, took oath that every party office-bearer would struggle and sacrifice until “Haqeeqi Azadi” (real independence) was achieved.

Mr Khan said the “imported and corrupt government” had ruined the country’s economy and the corrupt mafia was busy in getting their corruption cases cleared. He said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif alone had got himself cleared from Rs1,100 billion corruption cases, while common people had been crushed under massive inflation.

The PTI chairman said the only solution to the country’s massive problems lay in the general election and added that the whole nation was standing with the PTI which has its massive representation in all four provinces as well as Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

Meanwhile, Dr Yasmin Rashid at a news conference said she did not consider Maryam Nawaz guilty because she was trained in such a way. “Maryam Nawaz has been trained to prove the wrong thing right,” she said and recalled that her father Nawaz Sharif had removed the principal of Lahore College from the post for not giving admission to her daughter. She said the principal was reinstated after some protests and Maryam Nawaz was admitted to another college.

She also narrated the story of Ms Nawaz’s admission to the medical college.

Flanked by party leaders Shahbaz Gill and Omar Sarfraz Cheema, Dr Rashid said the Panama Leaks surfaced in 2016, when Nawaz Sharif was the prime minister of Pakistan and Imran Khan was just an MNA. As Nawaz Sharif had written in his statement that Maryam Nawaz was her dependent, Dr Rashid said she had filed a case against him in the Election Commission of Pakistan. PPP’s Latif Khosa had also filed a case.

In a TV talk show, Maryam Nawaz also stated she did not own any property in Pakistan, let alone in London. She said Maryam’s brother revealed that she owned properties in London. She also disputed Maryam’s claims that her grandfather and great-grandfathers were rich people.

Referring to the PML-N barbaric behaviour, the central Punjab president said the media’s cameras saw how they respected women and added that policemen had dragged the PTI women protesters.

Referring to Maryam’s statement that she had gone abroad for a surgery, Dr Rashid said she had herself undergone 11 operations by Pakistan’s doctors in the country and added this 72-year-old woman was hale and hearty. She said Maryam should have asked her elders why they did not establish even a single good hospital during their three-decade rule in the country.

Answering questions from the media, Dr Rashid said Imran Khan had taken oath from all organisational officials and called protest against oppression jihad.

“As a doctor, I have been fighting against oppression since childhood and did jihad against Nawaz Sharif’s spiritual father Ziaul Haq.”

Through the Sehat Sahulat Card, she said, more than 2.3 million people in Punjab had received free medical treatment facility worth more than Rs51 billion, about which Maryam Nawaz asked to stop the facility in an audio leak.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2022