Iran Press/ Asia: Early this week and following a week-long constitutional crisis, the parliament elected 70-year-old Shehbaz Sharif, who has a reputation in Pakistan as an effective administrator more than as a politician, as Pakistan’s new prime minister after the Pakistan Tehreek e Insaaf (PTI) government headed by Imran Khan was toppled through a no-trust vote.
Pakistan’s PTI Chairman Imran Khan on Saturday told his supporters at a political power show in Karachi that he stood by his decision to say “absolutely not” to the US when asked for military bases. “A country’s prime minister is like the father. The 220m people were my responsibility, and to take them into someone else’s war was my responsibility. I will never sacrifice my people for another country.”
Khan, while addressing a much-anticipated rally at Karachi’s Bagh-i-Jinnah on Saturday, explained his political philosophy while dealing with foreign affairs, saying: “There was a conspiracy against this country at a very vast international scale.”
“I want to tell the nation that I’ve never been against any country. I’m not anti-India, anti-Europe or anti-US. I’m with the humanity of the world. I’m not against any nation. I want friendship with everyone but slavery with no one.”
Khan claimed that he came to know three to four months back that the turncoats who eventually left his party as well as some journalists had started having meetings at the US embassy. “A journalist told me that ’a lot of money is being spent on us’. Thus, the conspiracy had been in the works for a while and then our US ambassador meets Donald Lu.”
Khan slammed Shehbaz Sharif, his successor in the top office. “There are 40bn rupee corruption cases on Shehbaz in NAB and the FIA. What more insult of our country can it be that a person out on bail is the prime minister,” he said.
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Pakistan Parliament elect Shehbaz Sharif as new PM
Imran Khan supporters stage protest across Pakistan against his ouster
