Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Saturday asked the nation to get ready for the party’s long march to Islamabad in the last week of May.
“This call is for all of Pakistan, and not just the PTI,” Imran said in a video message released by his party, adding that the decision had been made in a meeting of the PTI’s core committee.
He explained that the call was being given because the country was “insulted” and “the most corrupt people were placed atop the country via a foreign conspiracy”.
Imran lashed out at Shehbaz Sharif and his cabinet, saying that the prime minister was being referred to as “crime minister” and he had corruption cases against him, while 60 percent of the cabinet’s members were also out on bail.
“I want to give a message to all of Pakistan to start preparing from now. The start of our preparation will be chaand raat (eve of Eid) and I want to say specifically to the youth that you have to come out with flags and tell the whole world that the Pakistani nation is alive,” the PTI chairman said.
He predicted that the march to Islamabad would be the “biggest” in Pakistan’s history and a “sea of people” would flood into the city and give the message that “never after this will any foreign country be able to place a corrupt group over us, and Pakistan’s nation will make its own decisions”. The former premier had first spoken of his march to Islamabad last Saturday in his first press conference after his ouster via a successful vote of no confidence.
On Tuesday, he elaborated that the march’s purpose would be to give the US a message that Pakistan was a “free country”, and urged his supporters to gather people from every village, street and locality and prepare them for the movement for “true freedom”.
“I want two million people to come to Islamabad when I give the call. I want all of you to go to the people and preach to them about our movement for true freedom,” Imran had said on Wednesday while an adoring crowd chanted slogans in support of the PTI chairman at a workers’ convention in Lahore.
