Imran Khan urges President Alvi to ‘protect’ country’s democracy, Constitution

LAHORE: Former Prime Minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has urged President Arif Alvi to protect country’s democracy and Constitution, ARY News reported on Monday.

In a letter to the president dated November 6, the former premier said since the removal of the PTI government, the country has been “confronted with an ever-increasing scale of false allegations, harassment, arrests, and custodial torture”.

Imran Khan claimed that Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah had repeatedly issued death threats against him. He reiterated that he was informed of an assassination plot “hatched by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah”.

“The plot was operationalised earlier this week during our long march but Allah saved me and the assassination attempt failed,” the PTI chief added.

Imran Khan requested that as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces under Article 243 (2) of the Constitution, President Alvi take note of the “serious wrongdoings that undermine Pakistan’s national security”. He urged President Alvi to lead an inquiry to identify the guilty “and hold them accountable”.

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In the letter, Khan noted that Official Secrets Act was breached when a “confidential conversation between myself as prime minister, the Chief of Army Staff and the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was ‘leaked’ to the media”.

He claimed that this raised the “very serious question as to who or what organisation was involved in doing a clearly illegal wiretap of the PM’s secure phone line”.

Imran also went on to talk about the cypher controversy, saying that a cypher was “sent by our ambassador to the US in which the US official conveyed a direct threat of regime change to our envoy”.

“National Security Council meeting held on the issue during the reign as the premier clearly decided this was an unacceptable intrusion into our internal matters and the NSC decided on a demarche to be issued by MoFA to the US envoy”, the letter stated.

Imran concluded his letter by telling Alvi to act now to stop the abuse of power and violations of our laws and of the Constitution, which ensures the fundamental rights of every citizen.