NAB should be allowed to work in Punjab, says Shah

PPP leader claims anti-graft body suppressed in the province

SUKKUR: Khursheed Shah said on Sunday that the country’s top anti-graft body should be allowed to work in Punjab, claiming that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had been suppressed in the province.

Talking to journalists at his residence in Sukkur, the National Assembly opposition leader said if NAB fails to act in Punjab but takes action in other provinces, the body would become controversial.



Commenting on former Karachi mayor Mustafa Kamal’s recent news conference in which he directed blistering criticism at the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and party chief Altaf Hussain, Shah said Kamal’s statements would ‘certainly affect the party’.

Shah said the ex-mayor’s stance was ‘powerful’ and many others would choose to support him. As for the MQM, he said the party was “an old and beloved baby of the establishment, but it has now become a little naughty”.

The opposition leader clarified that his Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had no dispute with the government. “We just want to straighten out the issues. Any clash within parliament will serve someone else’s purposes. The PPP wants the black clouds hovering above to vanish.”

He said he would have a heart-to-heart discussion with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif if possible.



Shah said he wanted to save the system. “At the time the PPP’s tenure ended, every Pakistani owed around Rs85,000 of foreign debt, which has now risen to approximately Rs115,000.”

TRANSLATION BY ARSHAD SHAHEEN.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 7^th, 2016.