SAHIWAL: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Sunday, while condemning the plight of Muslims prevented from entering the United States (US), hoped that the ban is extended to Pakistanis.
“I want to tell all Pakistanis today, I pray that Trump bans Pakistani visas so that we can focus on fixing our country,” Kaptaan told a mammoth rally in Sahiwal.
US President Trump’s sweeping executive order, signed on Friday, suspends the arrival of refugees in the US for at least 120 days and bars visas for travelers from seven Muslim majority countries – including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – for the next three months.
The PTI chief said most educated Pakistanis want to leave this country because they think they can only acquire gainful employment if they have a “powerful source”, and said he believes that things in Pakistan can only improve if people work for progress.
“The day we bring back the merit system back to Pakistan, all our best citizens will return and work for the betterment of this country,” he said.
“We will have to fix Pakistan and stand on our own two feet. And the day that we decide this is our home and we have to fix it, we won’t beg for loans from the US and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).”
Khan said the day there is a government that decides it has to live and die in Pakistan, it will fix this country.
“The biggest issue here is the corruption of bigwigs who… become ministers and loot this country, taking the money abroad.”
“They may have elected Trump, but we have elected Nawaz Sharif.”
Lambasting Nawaz, he said, the PM had taken money from Pakistan and spent it abroad. “His businesses are abroad, his children are abroad, but he is the Prime Minister of Pakistan. He even goes abroad for checkups,” he said.
Khan lauded Iran’s tit-for-tat move in response to Trump’s immigration ban, which restricted US nationals travelling to Iran until the ban was lifted.
“Iran is an independent nation and we need to become like them,” Khan asserted.
