ISLAMABAD: Qamar Javed Bajwa, former head of the army, was among “some army generals” who played an “active part” from behind the scenes to remove the government of Imran Khan in April last year through a contentious confidence vote marred by allegations of military involvement, claimed a top leader of his Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party.
Fawad Chaudhry, senior vice president of the opposition party, told host Stephen Sackur of HARDtalk during an interview for BBC that the vote that ousted him in April was part of a US-backed plot supported by the military, despite the General Headquarters’ (GHQ) repeated denial of the claim.
And though this election marked a transition of power from one civilian government to another — a success story by Pakistan’s democratic standards — it had the fingerprints of military meddling all over it.
“In that conspiracy [against Khan], some army generals were involved, there is no doubt about that […] and the establishment actually played a very active role in the ouster of Imran Khan,” Chaudhry said.
“In fact, the last army chief was [also] actively involved in sending our government home.”
The military was also influencing the political parties allied with the PTI — Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) — during its years in government, he said.
Sackur also asked the former minister about the unprecedented October press conference of intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Nadeem Anjum, in which he and then-chief spokesperson of the army, Lt. Gen. Babar Iftikhar, accused Khan of asking the military for “illegal and unconstitutional” support for his government.
Khan’s criticism “is because the military and its chief refused to do illegal or unconstitutional things,” Gen. Anjum said, adding the military had made a policy decision to stay out of politics, and hence turned down his persistent requests.
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) director general, however, did not specify what Khan’s requests were.
Chaudhry responded by saying “the current [army] leadership has just assumed the office and we are hoping there will be a change in the policy, but the last chief was not talking the truth when he said we asked [for their] help. We only asked for their neutrality [in political affairs]”.
He also dismissed the impression the PTI was against the institution of the military, insisting the party was “not against anyone”.
“In Pakistan, unelected institutions such as the judiciary and the military [have] exercised their powers beyond [the provision of] Constitution [in the past], which is known to everyone,” he said.
Throwing light on PTI’s position on Pakistan’s troubled relationship with the United States, he expressed a willingness to work with Washington. He expressed hope the United States too would like to have a rapport with the nation’s most popular party.
Khan’s popularity has often surged because of his anti-Washington rhetoric. But Chaudhry said no party in Pakistan wanted a confrontation with Washington nor has PTI ever conveyed such an intent.
He also recalled that Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed Khan, dispatched a cipher following a meeting with a junior State Department official and Khan presented the same to the entire nation.
He said the American diplomat had conveyed to Islamabad that the future of Pakistan-US relations was dependent on the fate of a yet-to-be-tabled no-confidence motion against the prime minister.
Chaudhry said PTI could wait for elections “but this government is not ready to hold polls as they know people will oust them through a vote”.
He insisted that elections were needed for Pakistan and not for the opposition party. “We are asking that elections should be held at the earliest so that a new responsible government can take care of economic affairs.”
He said Pakistan plunged into massive political chaos after the “unconstitutional” removal of Khan. “Now people are standing on one side and the present ruling elite, that we call an imported government, is standing on the other side and that’s the primary problem in Pakistan.”
Chaudhry said that Pakistan’s reserves stood at $16 billion when the no-confidence was moved against Khan and now they had slipped below $6 billion.
He accused the government of having no economic plan, saying terrorism had also revisited the country. “Without political stability, how can you have economic stability in the country?” he asked.
