A day ahead of polls, Imran Khan's party alleges ‘worst-ever political engineering’ in decades

Lahore, February 7

Pakistan is witnessing its “worst-ever political engineering” in decades at the hands of the powerful military establishment to achieve “desired results” to form a government of its choosing in February 8 elections, jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s party alleged on Wednesday.

In the 2024 polls, the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) is on the wrong side of the military establishment while three-time premier Nawaz Sharif has appeared to be its darling.

The mainstream parties like the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) have had massive campaigning while the PTI was stopped by police and intelligence agencies from doing any kind of campaign, mostly in Punjab.

Since the PTI candidates are contesting independently because the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to deprive it of its iconic election symbol, cricket ‘bat’, some have withdrawn their candidature at last minute in favour of the establishment-backed candidates.

PTI spokesperson Raoof Hasan told this correspondent on Wednesday that in Thursday’s polls, the country is witnessing the worst-ever political engineering in the history of Pakistan to keep Khan’s party from winning the polls.

“It has been by all means the worst-ever political engineering through all phases of the elections to keep the PTI out of the election process and achieve the desired result,” Hasan said and added that despite all this political engineering and atrocities against the PTI leaders and workers, Khan’s party is going to win Thursday’s polls.

“A reign of terror has been unleashed on the party for the past 22 months under the ‘London Plan’ to dismantle PTI and remove its founding chairman Imran Khan from the political scene,” Hasan said.

He said the PTI leaders and workers were subjected to the worst state terrorism and barbarism after the “regime change conspiracy” of April 9, 2022.