PML-N shows political strength on PTI’s turf

Imran doesn’t want accountability, he wants to become PM: Muqam.

PESHAWAR: Moments after Imran Khan launched an accountability movement, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz staged a show of its political strength at the home turf of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.

“He [PTI Chairman Imran Khan] does not want accountability. He only wants to become the prime minister. Let me tell you [Imran], Dharnas cannot help you, but performance does,” Amir Muqam, a senior leader of the PML-N, said while addressing party workers.

Muqam said Imran was calling for accountability, but the director general of the Ehtesab Commission in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa had resigned because he could not carry out his duties, adding those in the anti-corruption department have also failed to take action against the corrupt people.



“The PTI has given the charge of the anti-corruption department to a brilliant officer, but when he launched inquiries into alleged embezzlement in the Billion-Tree Project, he was demoted the next day,” Muqam said while questioning the credibility of Imran’s claims of having a neutral anti-corruption body in the province.

On the Bank of Khyber scandal, the PML-N leader said the director of the bank had advertised corruption of the minister concerned. “An inquiry was carried out to probe the scandal, but I wonder where the report has gone,” Muqam said. “People want projects like Metro, Orange Line train, and only Nawaz Sharif can initiate these projects.”

Muqam also criticised the K-P government for holding a sit-in against the federal government, saying “the entire cabinet and even the chief minister was sitting on the container in the federal capital and the province was left at the mercy of floods and militants [referring to the APS attack]”.

Asked why PML-N provincial president Pir Sabir Shah and general-secretary Rehmat Salam Khattak failed to show up at the rally, PML-N provincial secretary information Nasir Musazai told the media Khattak could not reach since his father-in-law had passed away, adding Shah was not in the country.

Separately, Information Minister Senator Pervaiz Rashid said on Sunday that before launching any accountability movement, Imran should first respond to the charge-sheet of the former director-general of the K-P Ehtesab Commission regarding massive irregularities in the affairs of the provincial government.

“The PTI chief should clarify his position before the Election Commission about embezzlement in charity donations,” he said while talking to different news channels in the federal capital.

He urged Imran to focus on the development agenda instead of doing ‘negative politics’ on container. “Otherwise, the 2018 general elections would end his politics forever,” he added.

He said Imran should bring his own house in order as his party leaders also owned offshore companies and he had even sacked the K-P Ehtesab Commission chief for charge-sheeting his party’s government.

The minister said instead of staging sit-ins, Imran should better raise the issues in parliament and support the government to enact legislation to strengthen the accountability system.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 8^th, 2016.