Former National Assembly speaker Asad Qaiser on Thursday said PTI founder Imran Khan had nominated Omer Ayub as the candidate for prime minister and called for engagement with other political parties — including the Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) — protesting the Feb 8 election results.
The announcement came after Qaiser held a meeting with the imprisoned party chief at Adiala Jail. A day earlier, the PTI leader had petitioned the Islamabad High Court seeking a meeting with Imran to discuss the current political scenario.
With post-election deal-making in high gear, the PTI — like all other political parties — is weighing its options. Earlier this week, the Imran-led party, whose independent candidates clinched a lion’s share in the polls, said it would ally with the Majlis Wahdat-i-Muslimeen in the Centre and Punjab.
The party had said it would form a coalition government with the Jamaat-i-Islami in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. However, JI’s Liaquat Baloch later said that his party was not interested in working with the PTI in the province.
In a media talk outside Adiala Jail today, Qaiser said Imran had nominated PTI central general secretary Omar Ayub Khan — who is in hiding after facing over 20 criminal charges following the May 9 riots — as the candidate for prime minister.
“Secondly, every child knows about the rigging that took place in the elections and how our mandate was stolen […] regarding this, Khan sahib will give a date for nationwide protests by evening,” Qaiser said.
He further stated that Imran had given him an “assignment” to engage with all political parties protesting the election results, specifically mentioning Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s JUI-F, the Awami National Party and Qaumi Wattan Party.
“We want to form a strategy together because these were the worst elections in the history of Pakistan,” the PTI leader said, alleging that the Feb 8 polls had no credibility both locally and internationally.
“Therefore, we have decided that we will protest against this [elections] across the country and I will myself reach out to political parties for this purpose,” Qaiser added.
In response to a question, he stated that PTI-backed candidates who had won the polls would not resign in any condition and would sit in the assemblies. The PTI leader further added that the party would call its parliamentary session in “a day or two”.
Meanwhile, former senator Barrister Mohammad Ali Saif said Imran had picked Qaiser’s brother Aqibullah Khan as the speaker of the KP Assembly.
He said Imran had conveyed a special message regarding the statement issued by the US on the general elections.
“We believe that the US has in every period either supported dictators or brought forward the most corrupt leaders […] and democracy was ridiculed by bringing such people,” Barrister Saif said.
“Imran Khan sahib has sent a message that the US has a chance to clean its past by keeping an eye on rigging in Pakistan’s elections,” he stated, reiterating that the Feb 8 polls were the “worst and most rigging elections in the country’s history”.
On being questioned about Imran changing his stance on the US, Barrister Saif clarified that the PTI founder’s statement was in response to the State Department’s recent press briefing in which it had called for the investigation of claims of interference and fraud in the elections.
“This is our response that the US should pressurise those involved in rigging instead of issuing such cosmetic statements,” he added.
