Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb has said that PTI Chairman Imran Khan raising his voice against the army and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif being critical of the army’s interference in politics during his tenure are “two different examples”.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, when asked if there was a pattern in Pakistani politics where the ruling party would claim to be on the “same page” as the military but the opposition party would be critical of it, Aurangzeb said she had a differing opinion.
She said that when her party leader was the prime minister, he raised his voice against the military’s interference whereas Imran, she said, was offering former chief of army staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa a “lifetime extension, meeting him in the President House [and] inviting him to interfere” in the country’s politics.
The minister added that Imran’s statements against the army stemmed from the current COAS’s resolve to not interfere in the “country’s democratic procedure”.
