Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan said on Monday that a “paid” section of the press routinely twisted his comments.
The PTI chief made the comments while addressing those present at the party’s long march at Mandi Bahauddin, Jaranwala and Charsadda. Such journalists, he said, had made a habit of lining their pockets with handouts. A “propoganda cell” in Pakistan, he said, fed such individuals ‘news’, he said.
Khan said he had always aspired for a Pakistan that shared a warm equation with states the world over in connection with bilateral ties with the United States. Becoming another’s lackey, he said however, was out of the question. “We can even share a warm equation with India if the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is resolved.” The better our ties get, the more trade we will conduct. This will, he said, understandably help Pakistan prosper. “I have been saying this for 26 years.” The PTI supremo said he was ashamed to note that the Pakistan press had stooped to such a level that foreign journalists had to posit how their work was being misconstrued.
He said overseas Pakistanis desisted from investing in Pakistan due to poor rule of law. If this is remedied, Khan said, Pakistan will not have to beg world over for alms.
Citing his own example, the PTI chief said that he was a former prime minister, chief of the nation’s largest political party and his own party was in office in the Punjab. He, Khan said, was unable to have an FIR registered of the attack on him Wazirabad. Just imagine what a regular citizen of the nation has to endure, he said.
Khan also shed light on how PTI lawmakers had moved top court to have a judicial commission probe the Kenya assassination of journalist Arshad Sharif, the attempt to assassinate him and an FIR not being registered after and compromising footage of PTI Senator Azam Swati.
