File photo
Ayesha Gulalai, who quit the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) several years back, on Monday urged Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial to register a treason case against PTI Chairman Imran Khan and ban the party for “continuously and shamelessly dragging the Pakistan Army into politics.”
In a letter to the CJP, the former MNA who heads a splinter faction of the PTI, lamented that the PTI had been criticizing the armed forces for being neutral, threatening the dismemberment of the country, and intentionally attempting to sow rifts within the Army. “He [Khan] has also been threatening the state with disclosing the security secret of Pakistan,” she alleged.
“Acting like a mafia, the PTI chairman and his party through paid social media teams are running shameful, abusive and vulgar social media trends against Pakistan Army and honorable Chief of Army Staff Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, DG ISPR and others,” she claimed. “To further accelerate this venomous anti-state propaganda and spread lies and fake news, PTI chairman through his provincial government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has also recently recruited ‘social media influencers’ by spending Rs. 736 million from the public funds,” she added, referring to recent reports that the KP government had recruited 1,360 social media influencers against a salary of Rs. 25,000/month to “counter fake news and negative propaganda against the PTI-led government.”
According to Gulalai, “some mainstream channels and journalists” have also been used for the PTI’s propaganda. “With all due respect, if hate speech cannot be allowed in the cases of MQM leader Altaf Hussain and Ali Wazir [of the PTM], who actually never went to such an extent, then PTI chairman should be no exception and above law,” she stressed.
Emphasizing that no “patriotic Pakistani” could stay silent on this issue, she urged the CJP to take immediate notice “before it’s too late.” She concluded her letter by urging the CJP to take suo moto notice of the situation, “treason case may be registered against him [Khan] at the earliest, he and his party may be banned from politics, and his name be put on ECL to prevent him from fleeing the country.”
Gulalai had quit the PTI in 2017 after levelling serious allegations of harassment against former prime minister Imran Khan. In various public appearances, she had alleged that the PTI chairman sent inappropriate text messages to her, adding that he had also hinted at marriage in the texts he had sent.
1 comment
As long as there is no transparently equal and universal application of laws to all citizens however influential or powerful our goal of a better society will remain unachievable.