Facing a crucial trust vote in Parliament, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday claimed that the entire country was ready to go along with corrupt opposition parties instead of supporting them.
Addressing the Pakistan Overseas Convention in Islamabad, Khan called three opposition leaders – Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz President Shahbaz Sharif, Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Pakistan People’s Party co-chair Asif Ali Zardari ” Slogan as “Three puppets”. He said he was grateful to him for filing a no-confidence motion against him which strengthened his party.
Khan said the opposition leaders were “under the mistaken impression that people had forgotten their corruption”, but they were wrong, as they are now caught in the “captain’s trap”.
Noting the victory of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party in the next elections, he said, “I predict that not only is their no-confidence motion going to fail, but they will also taste defeat in the 2023 general elections.”
Turning to foreign policy issues, Khan said, he was not anti-US, UK and India.
“I pray that a sensible leadership comes to power in India so that we can talk to him after revoking the August 5, 2019 decision on Kashmir,” Khan was quoted as saying by Geo News.
He lamented that Western countries had double standards as they did not allow people to be judge, jury and executioner in their homeland.
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“But they (Western powers) were bombing Pakistani soil and killing innocent people […] And they are responsible for it,” he said, hitting out at the previous governments of the PPP and PML-N.
He claimed that no government in the past had done better than his administration in view of “unprecedented challenges” like the COVID-19 pandemic.
He challenged the media, economists and opposition parties to debate the performance of the government since it came to power in 2018.
According to Pakistani media reports, the Speaker of the National Assembly is expected to convene the lower house into session by March 22, while the vote on the no-confidence motion should be held between March 26 and March 30.
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