On Saturday, Asad Umar, who used to be the planning minister and was a top leader in the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), quit politics and resigned as a basic member of the party.
Before the May 9 riots, Umar quit as the secretary general of the PTI.
The former minister said on the social microblogging site X, “After more than a decade in public life, I have decided to quit politics for good.”
People used to think that Umar was one of Imran Khan’s closest advisors. He also said that he was giving up his basic PTI registration.
He is the most recent PTI leader to quit the party after a crackdown across the country in response to the May 9 riots. At that time, a lot of PTI leaders were arrested for protests against Imran’s arrest by the paramilitary Rangers from inside an Islamabad court building in a case of graft.
Umar did not want to join any other party after his news conference on May 24 where he spoke out against what happened on May 9 and said he was resigning from his party positions. This included the Istehkam-i-Pakistan Party and the PTI Parliamentarians, both of which were actively welcoming PTI defectors.
In his post on X, Umar talked about his news conference and said that he had already made it clear in public that he didn’t agree with “the policy of confrontation with state institutions.”
He said that he was worried that this kind of policy had caused a big fight between government agencies, which was bad for the country. At the chance, Umar thanked everyone who had helped him in public life. He specifically thanked the NA-54 team and the people who gave him two terms.
“I have done everything I could to serve the people who elected me.” The former minister ended by saying, “May Allah bless the people of Pakistan.”
The PTI is upset about an increase in “atrocities” before the elections.
The PTI said on Friday that the “state’s atrocities” against the party had gotten worse since the next general election date was set.
In a statement released after a meeting of the PTI Core Committee, the party said that some state institutions were still “kidnapping PTI leaders for statements.”
“The caretaker government and the ECP’s inaction on the ‘enforced disappearance’ of [PTI] Central Additional Secretary General Ali Nawaz Awan is the worst example of lawlessness,” the statement said.
The PTI said that the ECP and the caretaker government had not done their constitutional job at all and were the “key facilitators” of the state’s plan to “deviate” from the Constitution.
It also said that the ECP and the interim set-up should be aware of their important roles and stop being “part of conspiracies against democracy.” Instead, they should do what they need to do to protect and keep democracy alive.
The core committee of the PTI requested that the “illegal” arrests, raids, harassment, and forced disappearances of party leaders and activists across the country stop right away.
The PTI made it clear again that it wants the trials of its party leader and former prime minister, Imran, to happen in public, with both local and international media present.
It also said that the trial against the PTI leader should not have been held in secret or in jail, as required by the constitution or the law.
