Former President and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Asif Zardari on Monday said Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan supports Afghans because he allegedly got them included in the voter lists, Dawn newspaper reported.
Dawn is a Pakistani English-language newspaper.
The former president also hinted at the possibility of a “little delay” in the elections but said his party had no problem with it.
During an interview on Aaj TV, he said Afghan citizens were registered as voters in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the past to facilitate PTI.
“He [Imran Khan] supports Afghans because he had made fake lists [of voters] and they [Afghans] had been declared as Pakistani citizens,” Zardari said.
The PPP leader, while responding to a question, disclosed that the Election Commission was taking care of this issue, adding that he had already directed his party to take up the matter with the electoral watchdog, Dawn reported.
He criticised Imran Khan for allegedly supporting the opening of the offices of the banned Taliban and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in the country and said the PTI leader was doing it to get political advantage.
Zardari said that it was a former director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) who was behind the project of launching a cricketer in politics.
He alleged that Khan also had support from foreign lobbies, adding that his ex-wife was still behind him and that she had been propagating the PTI founder as a popular leader through bloggers.
The PPP leader criticised Khan and even called him an “illiterate” person. He claimed that after submission of the no-confidence resolution against Khan in 2022, the PTI through a common friend had approached him and offered him to share half of the PTI government’s remaining tenure, which he refused, terming the move “too late”, according to Dawn.
In response to a question, Zardari hinted at the possibility of a little delay in the February 8 elections but said “elections will certainly be held”.
“It makes no difference if the elections are delayed for another eight to ten days, but not more than that,” said Zardari when asked about the PPP’s possible reaction if the polls were delayed. He, however, said that only the ECP had the constitutional authority to fix the election date.
During the interview, Zardari also said that he was a candidate for the office of the prime minister with his son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari.
“Bilawal can be a candidate and I can be a candidate too … and even Khurshid Shah presents himself as one of the contenders,” the PPP leader said when pointedly asked “if Bilawal is not a party candidate for the PM office”.
Zardari claimed that the PPP would win a “significant” number of seats in the National Assembly in the upcoming general elections and would be able to play a decisive role in the election of the prime minister, according to Dawn.
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