Posters Urging Army Coup Appear Nation-wide In Pakistan

Pakistan Chief of Army Staff Gen Raheel Sharif has been urged to stage a coup and impose martial law in the country.

A little-known political party, ‘Move on Pakistan’ has put up banners across 13 cities in the country requesting the army chief to reconsider his retirement due in November. It wants Raheel Sharif to form a government of technocrats following the coup.

The banners which read ‘Janay ki baatain hui puraani, Khuda k liye ab ajao (Talks of leaving are now old; for God’s sake now come)’, have been put up in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Hyderabad, to name a few, Dawn reported.

Ali Hashmi, the central chief organiser of the party, told Dawn that the goal of their campaign was to suggest to the army chief that after imposing martial law a government of technocrats should be made in Pakistan and Gen Raheel should himself supervise it.

The party came into the spotlight in February when it put up posters and banners across the country asking the army chief not to retire and “help in eradicating terrorism and corruption”.

Though five months back the party maintained that it was not inviting the army to take over, this time it said that “there is no choice but to enforce martial law and form a government of technocrats”.

Mr Hashmi said that the absence of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from the country for more than 40 days proved that there was no need of a political government. “Those who have been running the country will keep running it”.

The Move on Pakistan party has been registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan for the past three years and a Faisalabad-based businessman, Mohammad Kamran, is its chairman.