Islamabad, Pakistan: Sensing the gravity of the political recklessness of writing an anti-Pakistan letter to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to halt the March 2024 tranche of loan Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) plans to make party’s spokesperson Raoof Hasan a scapegoat and move forward.
PTI wrote a letter to the IMF a few days ago demanding that the IMF should ensure the electoral audit of 30% of the seats of the National and Provincial assemblies within two weeks. The theme of the letter shows that the IMF must not release further payments to Pakistan unless the election’s watchdogs do not give a clean chit to the interim government for holding free and fair elections. The letter also said that this role by the IMF would be a great service to the people of Pakistan. The letter highlighted the impression that the writers of the letter have no faith in Pakistani institutions, including the judiciary, government, parliament, and other related institutions.
It is pertinent to mention that the letter triggered a grave response even within PTI cadres and newly elected PTI politicians lost any face-to-face political deal for any political party because almost everybody across the board in the political corps found this letter irresponsible and anti-state.
Now PTI’s politicians who have access to its founding chairman Imran Khan who is in jail are saying that Khan is very upset over the situation and angry for writing a letter to the IMF in a foolish way because he did not even have the illusion that after writing the letter, the whole of Pakistan will strongly condemn it. As usual, a disposable person has been chosen and that person is none other than the Information Secretary of the party, Roof Hasan, by whom this letter was signed.
Sources say that since Imran Khan is now quite irritated and apprehensive due to public reaction, it is quite possible that soon some disciplinary action will be taken against Raoof Hasan. The history of PTI indicates that this is a habit of Imran Khan to throw any of his close allies under the bus’s tyres once the person is used and consumed. This time it would be Raoof Hasan and Imran Khan would soon say that he was not consulted about this letter and this letter was sent by Raoof Hassan of his own free will.
It is pertinent to mention that Raoof Hasan has no evidence that he could prove that Imran Khan had cleared the content of the letter.
It has been observed in the past that it is Khan’s old habit that all the success of the party is due to him while all the other leaders of the party are responsible for all the failures, who take action at the directions of Imran Khan if the action backfires. Moreover, Raoof Hasan has no political background therefore he lacks lobbying and maneuverability within the party but being an American citizen he has strong relations with US lobbying groups.
