Martial law-like situation to follow if polls not held in stipulated period: Fawad

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Fawad Chaudhry on Thursday categorically said that if the election of the two provincial assemblies – Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab – were not held within 90 days, it would be a violation of the constitution, and the incumbent caretaker setup would stand dissolved, which means it would be like a “martial law”.

A day after his release from prison, speaking at a presser along with Hammad Azhar and Shahbaz Gill, he said: “After three months, the caretaker setup in both the provinces will stand dissolved. If elections are not held within three months, it will be like a martial law then”.

“If any administration or authority tries to defer the elections in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa beyond the 90-day period allowed by the Constitution, Article 6 of the Constitution will be applicable on them”, he declared. As per the law, the “unconstitutional means shall be guilty of high treason”, he said.

“The way some dummies have been installed in both the provinces through a caretaker government, they won’t be able to run the government in the provinces. The Punjab is bigger than the whole of Europe and cannot be run like City42 channel,” he said, while taking a dig at the caretaker Punjab Chief Minister, Mohsin Naqvi.

He insisted that “dummy governments” had been set up in Punjab and KP.

He also came down hard on the two provincial governors, saying both of them seemed to be on an unmerited power trip.

“However, if we criticise them, or anyone for that matter, we will be called traitors. By this definition, the entire country is full of traitors,” he added.

Chaudhry also addressed the accusation levelled against the previous PTI government of aiding and abetting terrorism in the country through lax policies and leniency — the rhetoric set by the leadership of the ruling Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM).

In the parliamentary session held on Tuesday regarding the Peshawar mosque blast, members of the treasury alleged that the PTI-led government had permitted terrorism to take root in the country again.

Chaudhry said that “you are trying to heap the blame on PTI, however, we had defeated terrorism and during the years that the PTI was in power, Imran Khan handled matters of Afghanistan and the US in the appropriate manner”. There was no blast in Pakistan during our time, he maintained, adding that the PTI’s policy was to try and curb hatred as Imran Khan’s stance has always been quite clear: political problems cannot be solved by military force.

He went on to say that the current leadership in Afghanistan respected Imran Khan, insisting, “but the federal government’s stance had destroyed Khan’s Afghan policy”.

“You cannot solve the TTP [Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan] issue without the Afghan leadership’s backing,” he said, adding “using force will make matters more complicated”.

Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, he added, made over 17 visits to the US but has never visited Afghanistan and this shows how serious this government takes the Afghanistan issue.

Attacking the incumbent government, he also said that “its policy is unclear and that it has no idea of what the situation in Afghanistan actually is”.

“Back when we were in power, it was being touted that Pakistan is going from terrorism to tourism, we even revived international cricket in the country. In merely nine months, our efforts have been destroyed,” he added

He further said that the institutions should not back corrupt people as the days of both the PPP and the PML-N are numbered.

“Don’t carry the burden of [Asif Ali] Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, and Fazlur Rehman so much that your back doubles over with the brunt of the burden,” he added.

He also said that institutions should try to solve the country’s many problems instead of making arrests.

“First they arrested Azam Swati, then Shahbaz Gill, then me. Now they have charged Shandana Gulzar with treason as she was booked in a sedition case just for her remarks on a TV talk show which is not fair,” he lamented.

“This is all part of an attempt to destabilise Pakistan,” he said, adding “the government is struggling to manage both the country and Imran Khan and failing miserably at both.”

Speaking on the occasion, Hammad Azhar, the ex-minister for economic affairs, came down hard on the coalition government for its flawed economic policies as a delegation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is in Pakistan for technical and policy-level discussions to revive the $7 billion Extended Fund Facility stalled for months. “Economy does not run without stability,” he said, adding“ the rupee has decreased from Rs80 to Rs90 in nine months. This will have an adverse impact on the country.”

He further said that the inflation rate in the country would reach 40 per cent, adding “only if general elections are held to bring to power a democratically elected government, then the country’s economic woes be assuaged.”

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023