A senior leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf admitted Friday that the party did not have any evidence against former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry or ex-caretaker Punjab chief minister Najam Sethi when they accused them of being involved in rigging during the 2013 general elections.
Speaking on Geo News talk show Naya Pakistan, senior PTI leader Naeemul Haq said that PTI chairman Imran Khan had termed the claim of ’35 punctures’ a political statement, and that political statements can either be true or false.
“Is every political statement the truth or a lie? If somebody believes that a political statement in itself is false or a lie, then they can believe this. A political statement can either be the truth or can be a lie as well,” said the PTI leader.
“I think Hamid Mir also gave this perception that the statement was not true, so I immediately tweeted to clarify that it was also a political statement as well as the truth,” he said.
Haq said that Hafeez Pirzada, the senior lawyer representing the PTI in the judicial commission on election rigging, had said during consultation with party leadership that he would not bring up those allegations which the party could not back with evidence.
These allegations included the accusations against Najam Sethi and Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, he said.
PTI Chairman Imran Khan, during an interview with Geo News journalist Hamid Mir, had conceded that his allegation of ’35 punctures’ was merely a political statement.