Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf

How much of this is a big issue for the whole of Pakistan right now?

Well, I think on this question, normally, uh, whoever has a government in the center, they, uh, they get a government in Kashmir, uh, and this has happened, you know, when the PTI, uh, Imran Khan's party was in center, they got the government in Kashmir and now the PML-N with the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's party is in the government, uh, and they may, uh, win the election in the, in the Kashmir it seems so.

And this hap- uh, this happened also with the Bilawal Bhutto's party.

But I think, uh, the most important thing is that, uh, uh, the people of the Kashmir, they got a chance to vote.

The state can only run, uh, through the legal ways.

And for that matter, I believe, uh, all the political parties, ei- either the Bilawal Bhutto, uh, and the PML-N, they want that.

And, uh, looking at what the PTI, uh, you know, Imran Khan's party, uh, they normally boycott these elections.

Uh, they are facing a leadership crisis, uh, since Imran Khan is in jail.

But the only reason I'm saying it is because we feel what they are trying to do is create an image of Imran Khan in a wheelchair on a hospital bed, an aging, dying Imran Khan, the way they show him in these pictures.

Like, it's not PTI supporters taking those pictures out.

Now we know who's doing it.

It's these agencies doing it.

So has the Pakistani political and military establishment now made itself too useful? for the US to care about Imran Khan's fate.

Can they now simply ignore the nationwide protests that we saw again this week in Pakistan, calling for Khan's release from prison? Joining me now is Zulfi Bukhari, a former special assistant to Imran Khan, one of his closest advisors and a spokesperson for his Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf PTI party.

Zulfi Bukhari, thank you for joining me on Media Unfiltered.

Thank you, Mehdi.

Start exploring on Vrbo and book your next stay now.

Let me ask you this, Zulfi Bukhari.

Is there currently any negotiation going on between your party, Pakistan Tehri Vinsas, PTI, and the military establishment or the political establishment in Pakistan over Imran Khan's release?

Unfortunately, Mehendi, there's not.

Which brings me to the next point, which is that when Khan was in office, he was very popular, uh, across a different, uh, cross-section of Pakistani society and people who were suff-suffered from the war on terror, uh, upper class people, people lower class who saw him as, uh, promising, you know, more economic redistribution and so forth.

Uh, across cultural lines and across stra- status, uh, uh, you know, uh, class lines, he was quite a unifying figure for many, many people, not for the entire country, but for, uh, quite an interesting cross-section who united around his PTI party.

Uh, that party has been heavily suppressed, but also what's happened since he's been, uh, removed from power and in jail is that the country seems to be fraying apart in many ways, uh, in Balochistan, uh, in, uh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, uh, and also even in Kashmir recently.

We saw our colleague, Areeba Fatima, file, filed a very disturbing and interesting report about the Pakistani military's crackdowns on electoral reform protesters in Kashmir, killing people pretty much brazenly, uh, in a part of the country that the entire creation of Pakistan was sort of based on, uh, helping liberate those people or the Pakistani foreign policy, at least for the last many decades since independence, has been about liberation of Kashmir from, uh, what they see as Indian control of the part of the province.

So they abided by nothing, nothing whatsoever for what the Supreme Court had ordered.

Is, is the PTI, Imran Khan's party, going to ask the Supreme Court to insist that its order is complied with?

with?Yes, tomorrow we're filing for contempt on many grounds, including the ones that they've taken him completely to the wrong hospital.

The court order actually says that if you have to keep him there till the sixteenth of September, until his next hearing, do so.