It's not looking good for Imran Khan
The detailed statement by the Pakistan military following the Formation Commanders Conference of June 7 is uncompromising to put it mildly.
The statement said that while the legal proceeding of the perpetrators and instigators of the May 9 attacks have begun, it “is time that the noose of law is also tightened around the planners and masterminds”. It seems that the military is in no mood to relent or to forgive the masterminds.
Clearly, here it is referring to Imran Khan and his close aides. Many of those close aides have jumped ship but there are some who remain and who refuse to hold ‘press conferences’ to publicly disassociate themselves from the party.
And those who have seem to be gravitating towards Imran Khan’s former close friend and benefactor Jahangir Tareen.
The dismantling of the PTI didn’t take long. But why would it - given how it was cobbled together to make it bigger than it actually was - so that it could win a majority of seats in the National Assembly. More than half of its MPs were from other parties, and they were brought to join it, just like how most of them were ‘taken away’ from it in recent days.
PTI’s Vice-Chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi (he hasn’t officially left yet) met Imran Khan on June 7, a day after he was released from his MPO detention of 30 days. He didn’t speak to reporters after the meeting but from the body language of the pic of the meeting circulated by PTI, it’s clear that he delivered some message (or possibly even a warning) to Imran Khan.
Side by side with this, cases against Imran Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi, her friend Farah Gogi and former Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar have been registered in the bribes-for-postings scandal.
It’s not looking good for Imran Khan at this stage, and even he knows that.