Imran Khan’s politics could have been finished in April 2022 but former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa kept him alive for his own extension, says senior analyst and Imran Khan’s brother-in-law Hafeezullah Khan Niazi.
Speaking on Naya Daur TV’s flagship show Khabar Say Aagay (Beyond the Headlines) on Thursday, Niazi said that Imran Khan’s aggressive politics has no parallels in Pakistan’s political history and ‘although some people tell me he’s been pleading for mercy in his Attock Jail cell, I refuse to believe these claims’.
Commenting on President Arif Alvi’s suggestion to the Election Commission of Pakistan to seek guidance from the supreme court for setting the date of election, Hafeezullah Niazi said that the establishment had no plans to hold the elections but it’s getting more and more difficult for them to evade the holding of elections because the new chief justice Qazi Faez Isa might not be as hostile to the establishment as some might think that he is but he will certainly not tolerate an unconstitutional delay in the elections. “At which point the establishment might have to bring in new PCO judges,” he added.
Upon the question of his son Hassan Khan Niazi’s involvement in the May 9 riots and the eventual arrest, Hafeezullah Niazi said that his son had been caught in the crossfire between the army and Hassan’s uncle Imran Khan. “Hassan Niazi did not wave the corps commander’s trousers on May 9 but whatever he did, it appears that even Indian saboteur Kulbhushan Jadhav hadn’t been subjected to the kind of restrictions that the accused of the May 9 incidents were,” he said.
Commenting on former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s planned return to Pakistan next month, Hafeezullah Niazi argued that Imran Khan currently enjoyed the same kind of popularity in Punjab that Nawaz did between 2007 and 2021 when he was the undisputed leader of Pakistan’s largest province. This is what I’ve been telling my PMLN friends as well, he added, that they shouldn’t bring a vote of no-confidence against Imran Khan because that would brand them as the pawns of the establishment while Imran Khan will become the symbol of anti-establishment politics in the country.
“What Imran Khan has done is unprecedented in Pakistan’s history. He doesn’t need more popularity. Other political leaders, compared with him right now, seem irrelevant,” Hafeezullah Niazi said.
Beyond the Headlines is hosted by Raza Rumi Monday-Thursday 9 PM (Pakistan Time) only on nayadaur.tv