Senior Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader and former interior minister Rana Sanaullah has said that his party had supported the extension for former army chief General (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa in order to tackle the political onslaught by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan.
“Some decisions are part of a strategy as per the requirements of that time and this [Gen Bajwa’s extension] was one such decision,” he said during an interview with a private TV channel. He termed the decision to support Gen Bajwa’s extension in 2020 as a tactical manoeuvre by the party to combat what he referred to as the “fitna” or anarchy being inflicted upon the nation. This marked Sanaullah’s second consecutive public denunciation of the former military leadership within just two days.
A day prior to this statement, he also criticised former generals Bajwa and Faiz Hameed, branding them as “national criminals” and calling for punitive measures against them. “The way the PML-N brought Gen Musharraf to justice, it will do the same to [both men],” he had said on Wednesday. Earlier, another party leader Khurram Dastgir Khan had blamed some former judges of the Supreme Court and ex-military generals for the current wave of inflation and inflated electricity bills.
“The group of judges who had disqualified Nawaz Sharif in 2017 is responsible for the inflation as [the decision] dealt a blow to Pakistan’s economic stability and democracy,” PML-N’s former energy minister Khurram Dastgir Khan said. “This group was supported by (former army chief) General Bajwa and (ex-DG ISI) General Faiz who imposed Imran Khan on the people of Pakistan after a long conspiracy,” Dastgir said, adding the PML-N’s track record of taking the country out of energy-related crisis was “superb”. Nawaz Sharif had previously accused Bajwa of toppling his government, pressuring the judiciary and installing the government of Imran Khan in the 2018 elections but his younger brother, former PM Shehbaz Sharif has lauded the former army chief’s services when he bid farewell to him in November 2022.
