Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has demanded a date for early elections be set within the next six days, threatening to lead a three-million-strong march on the capital.
During a demonstration in Islamabad, which brought together thousands of people, Khan accused the police of killing five supporters. throughout the country, in clashes recorded on Wednesday, in the first attempt to start a march.
The march began in the city of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the northwest of the country, led by the pro-Khan party, but clashes began in Lahore in the east.
A security forces fired tear gas grenades and repelled hundreds of protesterswho threw stones as they tried to cross a blocked bridge near the city to board buses bound for Islamabad.
In the capital, dozens of Khan supporters also clashed with police and set fire to bushes along one of the city’s main avenues. The violence was also recorded in other places, such as in Karachi (south), where protesters burned a police vehicle.
At least a dozen protesters and several police officers were injured. Before Wednesday’s march, the authorities used dozens of containers and trucks to block the main highways connection with Islamabad.
Khan flew by helicopter to a highway about 100 kilometers northwest of Islamabad, where he condemned the police crackdown and urged supporters to join the march.
The government responded on Wednesday with the arrest of more than 1,700 Khan supporters.
Since being ousted from Pakistan’s leadership by a no-confidence motion on April 10, Khan has been trying to mobilize people to increase pressure on the current coalition government and move the legislature forward.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government accused Khan of wanting to sow “chaos and anarchy” in the country.
Khan was elected in 2018, denouncing the corruption embodied by Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), two longtime rival parties that have dominated the country’s political life for decades.
But a crumbling economy, with stagnant growth for the last three years, high inflation and heavy public debt, cost him his job, bringing the PML-N and PPP back to power in a coalition government.
Source: Observadora
