In another blow, senior PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry parts ways with Imran

Islamabad, May 24  In another major blow to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), senior politician and former federal minister Fawad Chaudhry on Wednesday parted ways with the former ruling party and its Chairman Imran Khan, media reports said.

“[With] reference to my earlier statement where I unequivocally condemned the May 9 incidents, I have decided to take a break from politics, therefore, I have resigned from my party position and parting ways with Imran Khan,” he wrote on his official Twitter handle, The Express Tribune reported.

Fawad joins a long list of PTI leaders who have announced quitting PTI following the May 9 vandalism and violent protests across the country – hours after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) arrested PTI chief Imran Khan in the Al-Qadir Trust corruption case, the report said.

So far, Shireen Mazari, Fayyazul Hassan Chohan, Malik Amin Aslam, Mahmood Moulvi, Amir Kayani, Jai Prakash, Aftab Siddiqui and Sanjay Gangwani, among many others, have left Imran Khan’s party.

Shireen, while speaking to the media in Islamabad on Tuesday, had said that she was not only leaving the party, but also saying goodbye to active politics, saying that her health and daughter Imaan Mazari suffered significantly during her 12-day incarceration.

“I am leaving politics because of my children, family, and health issues. My family and children are my first priority. I have condemned the events that took place on May 9 and 10. I have condemned all forms of disorder,” she had said.

Though, PTI Chairman Khan sees this exodus as “forced divorces” at “gunpoint”, political experts suggest that it’s an attempt to factionalise the PTI just like the PML-N was converted into PML-Q overnight at the turn of the last century, The Express Tribune reported.

“Without beating around the bush, this is obviously the result of pressure coming from the establishment. The government is simply fanning it,” former PPP Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar said.