Prime Minister Imran Khan in his address to the nation on the eve of a no-confidence vote said that the opposition believes they will certainly dismiss him.
He was referring to the Supreme Court of Pakistan's verdict on Thursday to restore the National Assembly after it declared the government's decision to dissolve the assembly and NA Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri's ruling against the Constitution.
"My message to our nation is I have always and will continue to fight for Pakistan till the last ball," the premier tweeted late Thursday while summoning his cabinet and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leaders for crisis meetings.
The apex court in its verdict has ordered National Assembly Speaker Asad Qasier to summon the session on Saturday (April 9) and not later than 10:30am to allow the vote on the no-confidence motion against the premier.
The premier in his address to the nation today regretted over the apex court's decision for restoring the National Assembly and allowing the no-confidence motion against him which the premier thought was part of 'foreign conspiracy' against his government.
The premier said that while he respected the country's judiciary, he complained that the Supreme Court should have at least initiated the probe on the “foreign conspiracy” matter.
"It was disappointing because the top court did not look at the reasons for the dismissal of the no-confidence vote. The apex court should have at least seen the letter, or conducted an in-camera briefing over the threat letter, before giving a verdict.
"Another thing that was shocking for us was that the horse-trading angle was completely neglected."
Khan said lawmakers were "openly bought and kept at Sindh House", and all this was motivated by a foreign conspiracy, as "established by the threat letter".
"I have never ceased to believe that Pakistan will become a great nation one day. However, this dream faced a setback by seeing how openly I saw buying and selling of our lawmakers - something that could never be imagined in a Western democracy.
"I also call on my people to take a stand against foreign-funded conspiracy."
Threat letter
Talking about the "threat letter", Khan said that he could not openly disclose the message "since it would compromise on Pakistan's secrets".
"But I will try to explain it for the public in plain terms without having to declassifying it.
"The first part of the letter said that Imran Khan should not have visited Russia. The letter, which we received before the submission of the no-trust motion, said that if the premier loses the no-trust motion, all previous issues will be forgiven.
"How unfortunate it is that a foreign power is openly threatening a sovereign country’s elected leader. If all that is to happen, then why did we get independence in the first place.
"As we found out more things, we got to know that US diplomats had been secretly meeting our MNAs, and the opposition."
