Berating former prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif claimed on Sunday that the former did not rise to power suddenly, saying “planners” had decided to impose him on the state. Addressing the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) workers’ convention in Sialkot, Khawaja Asif said Imran Khan always stabbed his friends in the back. Referring to Imran Khan’s criticism of the institutions, the defence minister said he “slams his benefactor from dawn to dusk”. He said the deposed PM Imran Khan said that he made a mistake by granting the extension to General (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa, but on the other hand, he offered the then-army chief an extension to his tenure for life. Imran Khan was brought to power under a plot, Asif said, adding that after destroying the young generation, the PTI chief was demanding elections.
Dubbing Imran Khan an “experiment”, the federal minister said that the former was launched in 2012-13 under an “agenda”. “It was a wrong and disastrous experiment,” he added. Referring to the alleged differences between the PTI and the PML-Q over the dissolution of the assemblies, the minister challenged Imran Khan to dissolve the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies. He said, “Imran Khan was merely pursuing his personal vendetta against PML-N.” He added that Rana Sanaullah had been released by the court because no charges of drug trafficking could be proved against him.