Exploring new avenues: Change not possible without lawyers, says Qureshi

PTI leader Shah Mahmood Qureshi urges legal fraternity to join party in rooting out corruption

KARACHI: A positive change in the country is not possible without lawyers, according to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi. “[I] firmly believe that change is not possible without lawyers and they should play a role in rooting corruption in the country.”

He was speaking to the legal fraternity at the Karachi Bar Association on Wednesday as part of his party’s anti-corruption campaign which was launched in April this year in the aftermath of the Panama Leaks saga.

The PTI vice-chairperson insisted that his party’s struggle was for a ‘national cause’ and urged lawyers to join in. “Whenever lawyers have campaigned, they have attained big successes,” he said, referring to the 2007 ‘movement for the restoration of the judiciary’.



He opined that a major chunk of the population was living below the poverty line, while a specific group of people — political and business elites — were creating tax havens for themselves to turn their black money white.

Qureshi, who has also served as foreign minister, said that a debate was going on in the USA, UK and other countries after the Panama Papers revealed the names of global leaders involved in establishing offshore companies which remain undeclared in their native countries.

Commenting on such a scene in the country, he said that PTI and other opposition parties were looking confidently towards moving ahead while the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz government was trying to let the matter linger on. “Government should know that it’s a very long night,” he said.

Criticising the practice of taking loans from international financial institutions, he said that the whole Pakistani nation has been pawned to the International Monetary Fund. “People are reluctant to pay taxes because they know it would not be spent on them in return.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2016.