A lot seems to have changed, in content and perhaps even in terms of objectives of Imran Khan and his Tehreek-e-Insaf. For a man who has always claimed to be an advocate for social justice, transparency and ethics, it is strange that he welcomes all sorts of opportunists, some with criminal records to his party. Is he not aware of a man from Lahore, involved in land mafia scams with connivance of Musharraf’s former DG Rangers Punjab, or the controversial Oxford educated former foreign minister and Zardari cabinet Chairman Planning Commission, whose rice export family concern was involved in heroin smuggling during BB’s second tenure?
This incident was reported in print media when instead of exporter, the local courier company manager was wrongly implicated by customs at Karachi and thereafter the matter was hushed up. Has he forgotten about the BBC documentary which implicated sons of a former president in illegal car smuggling of stolen vehicles across the Pak-Iran border? Can IK explain how it is kosher that the education business house cartel, who benefitted from dole-outs of railway and state land and championed US intervention in Afghanistan, Lal Masjid massacre and drone attacks in his capacity as Musharraf’s foreign minister has become clean when he switches over to his party?
Imran Khan wants to reopen Younus Habib funding of sensitive agencies involved three decades ago in aiding political parties, while he himself seems to be a beneficiary of big business and even same agencies. After all who is paying for all these chartered jets, bullet proof cars etc? The PTI today seems to be a party dominated by all those who have few things in common, like switching political parties at convenience and calls for Seraiki province. Is this party becoming an ethnic nationalist party that has become friendly with another such party based in Urban Sindh, which Imran till few months ago defined as a fascist terrorist mafia?
GULL ZAMAN
Peshawar