Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir on Thursday has denied ‘receiving any letter from any one,’ stating that ‘even if any such letter was received, he would forward it to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.’
“I have not received any letter from anyone, and even if I do, I will not read it,” General Munir told reporters informally at a luncheon held at the Prime Minister’s House for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. I am going to forward it to the Prime Minister. The army chief insisted that if he received such a message, he would forward it to the prime minister.
General Munir insisted that Pakistan was on the path to development and that the nation was making satisfactory progress.
The army chief went on to say, “Pakistan is progressing, and Pakistan must progress as well.”
Khan, who has been imprisoned since August 2023 in dozens of cases ranging from terrorism to corruption, wrote a third open letter to Gen. Munir just a day prior, according to his attorney.
The imprisoned PTI founder reaffirmed accusations of election tampering in the third letter, claiming that “money launderers” were installed through manipulated polls.
His attorney, Faisal Chaudhry, had issued a statement saying, “The PTI founder, in his letter to the army chief, has raised the issue of giving preference to the minority over the majority through election fraud.”
Earlier, the 71-year-old cricketer-turned-politician said he had penned two “open letters” to the army chief on Feb 3 and Feb 8, “because all democratic avenues had been obstructed”.
In previous letters, Imran pointed out what he claimed was a growing distance between the military and the public.
In his letters, the former premier penned six points and urged the army to reevaluate its policy to win over the public with reasons and suggestions proposed by Imran to remedy the situation.
The letters held importance as the former ruling party ended its negotiations with the PML-N-led government last month, in which the PTI had demanded two things — the formation of judicial commissions on events that transpired on May 9, 2023, and November 24-27 as well as the release of “all political prisoners”, including Khan.
In December last year, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said that no political leader’s desire for power should be more important than Pakistan’s interests.
The ISPR top spokesperson’s comments came in response to a question about purported backdoor talks between the PTI and the establishment.
“All political parties and leaders are respectable to us. No individual, his politics and his desire for power are above Pakistan,” he said during a media briefing.