Outspoken PTI leader Sher Afzal Marwat said that although PTI had two months to prepare for its planned march, the government was the one that had actually made preparations.
Speaking on a private television program, Marwat said PTI had failed to prepare for the march. He noted that the party had initially announced the march for September 27, but Sohail Afridi later postponed it and proposed holding talks, which, according to Marwat, reflected the party’s weak position. He added that the march would not take place on October 4 either.
Marwat said PTI had not explained why the march was postponed to October 4, just as it had provided no reason for failing to mobilise on September 27. He claimed that the march was never going to take place, arguing that if there had been a genuine intention to hold it, preparations would have been made accordingly.
Another politician, Barrister Danyal Chaudhry, who was also participating in the program, said the extent of PTI’s preparations for the march was evident to everyone.
He said the party’s underlying objective behind the march was more important, arguing that the announcement was merely a tactic to divert attention from what he described as PTI’s poor performance in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).
Chaudhry said the situation in KP was well known, with terrorism continuing to pose a serious challenge and citizens losing their lives. He argued that attention was being diverted to other issues instead of addressing the province’s security and governance challenges. He further alleged that whenever PTI had the opportunity, it had acted in ways that weakened the country, while maintaining that protecting the lives and property of citizens remained the government’s priority.
It is worth mentioning here that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi has announced that the PTI’s long march towards Islamabad, originally scheduled for September 27, will now begin from Peshawar on October 4. Speaking at a press conference in Peshawar, Afridi said the decision was taken by PTI’s political committee, which unanimously agreed to postpone the march for one week.