ISLAMABAD: PMLN Leaders have urged the country’s security agencies to allow the natural democratic process take its course in the Senate Chairman’s elections.
At a press conference in Islamabad, PMLN Leaders Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Ahsan Iqbal, Marriyum Aurangzeb and Hafiz Abdul Kareem said that PMLN senators are being pressurised by intelligence agencies’ officials over phone calls to vote for the PTI government’s candidate in the election.
Abbasi said the Senate elections used to be a smooth process without any controversy in Pakistan, but all that changed in 2018 when a clear majority of PMLN was bulldozed to install a Chairman who wasn’t even represented by any party at the time. Since then he said the pushing and pulling of party senators through blackmail and other means has taken over the Senate elections.
Abbasi said when the DG ISPR assured that the ISI and other government security agencies would not interfere in the elections, PMLN took his word. However, the party had no choice but to call out the fact that ISI officials had once again started calling to push PMLN and its allied senators to change their loyalties and vote for the government candidate. He pointed out how many senators like Hafiz Abdul Kareem were threatened by state institutions like NAB, FIA and Anti Corruption Establishment to vote against party lines or face persecution and political victimisation. The former Prime Minister said PMLN doesn’t want to name names because it understands that those officials were only following orders. It was the practice of influencing voters through state institutions that needs to be exposed, condemned and eliminated he stressed.
Speaking at the press conference, Hafiz Abdul Kareem told the media that eversince the schedule for Senate elections was announced, he had been entangled in fictitious cases with a clear message that these cases would dissappear if he voted in a way desired by the state. He said he was called multiple times in the running month to coerce him to vote for the government candidate.
Hafiz Abdul Kareem said he told the agency official that his conscience doesn’t allow him to vote for a party that has destroyed the country’s economy, interior and foreign matters. He said he stood for the supremacy of God Almighty, his Prophet (SAWW) the best interests of the country and loyalty to his party.
Answering a question Ahsan Iqbal said the entire country is brow-deep into crisis because of the imposed PTI government and yet those who imposed them continue to back PTI. He said the powers that installed this selected disaster on Pakistan should open their eyes and see the economic, socioeconomic indicators, foreign policy disasters, the loss of Occupied Kashmir and every other sector’s nosedive. He said the nation is begging the power wielding institutions of the country to stay neutral instead of putting their wieght behind the imposed PTI government that had ripped the country to shreds.
