Railing against former prime minister Imran Khan for running a hybrid regime, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has admitted that even his government could not run without support from the military.
In an interview with Geo News broadcast on Thursday, when anchor Hamid Mir pointed out that Pakistan was among the most prominent examples of hybrid regimes in the world today, PM Shehbaz said that Mr Khan had relied heavily on the former army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa.
“Mr Khan also received military support during his tenure. His government was a blend of various components, despite his accusations against others for the same. Every government requires backing from key sectors, including the military,” he said.
Earlier, in a separate interview with journalist Ammar Masood, PM Shehbaz reacted to the publication of the purported text of a diplomatic cable describing a meeting between Pakistan’s former US envoy and a senior State Department official.
Regarding the publication of the purported text of the diplomatic cipher, the premier said: “If the contents of the message are published in an international newspaper and prove to be true, it would indeed be a ‘massive crime’.”
When asked if he thought The Intercept story confirmed Mr Khan’s assertions about a foreign plot to remove his government, PM Shehbaz said that he had chaired two meetings of the National Security Committee on the subject. “In one of these meetings, former ambassador and Foreign Secretary Asad Majeed explicitly mentioned that there was no talk of a conspiracy during his conversation with Donald Lu,” the outgoing PM explained.
Denying the existence of a conspiracy against Mr Khan’s government, PM Shehbaz accused the PTI chief of initially alleging a conspiracy, but later retracted his statement.
He said that former army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and other high-ranking military officials had also confirmed the absence of any conspiracy against Pakistan, while ambassador Asad Majeed Khan had also emphasized that there was no hint of a conspiracy.