Imran Khan addresses a news conference in Islamabad on Wednesday. EXPRESS NEWS SCREEN GRAB
Hours after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif slammed the opposition for demanding his resignation, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan said that “moral authority is everything in genuine democracies” but “a person brought up by a military dictator does not know its meaning”.
“Nawaz Sharif’s resignation has become a national demand but he is even worse than a military dictator, who only knows how to use force to get his way. His political brought up hinders him to act in accordance with public’s wishes,” Imran said while addressing a press conference at Bani Gala here on Wednesday.
The press conference came in the backdrop of the PM’s speech at the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industries (SCCI) and finalisation of The Election Bill, 2017, by a parliamentary committee sans PTI’s major recommendations to it.
Imran said that from the Panamagate JIT report, it had dawned upon the nation that Sharif’s only business was corruption and money laundering.
PM slams opposition for resignation demand
“The Sharif family has used its business entities as a front to do corruption. These companies and businesses were a front to recycle corruption money,” he said, stressing that the PM would either resign or made to step down.
He said even within the PML-N ranks, some politicians had been acting in accordance with their consciences and distancing themselves from the Sharif family’s corruption and only those complicit in corruption, money laundering and concealment of assets were standing with the Sharifs.
The PTI chief said the entire cabinet had spent the past year defending the Sharif family in the Panamagate case. “They don’t even bother to condemn Indian aggression along the Line of Control,” he claimed.
“The Sharifs were given multiple chances to clarify allegations against them but every time they lied and given contradictory statements,” he added.
He maintained that the Sharif family’s business entities were in loss and as per their own record the family defaulted many times in the past; but on the other hand without any profits from factories, their children’s wealth kept growing exponentially.
“It started off from Ittefaq Foundries – and since Nawaz Sharif became the chief minister that foundry has been in loss, but somehow [it has] been reproducing new factories. They defaulted many times and some 10 companies of theirs in England were in losses… amounting to 10 million pounds,” he said.
The Sharif family, he alleged, had benefitted the most from mega projects like motorways, yellow cab schemes, metros and orange lines and took the commissions and corruption money out for their children to secure, through their front companies.
Imran said the JIT investigations had confirmed everything that the PTI had been claiming about the Sharif family – from Maryam Nawaz being the beneficial owner of offshore firms to the fraudulent trust deeds and the bogus Qatari letters.
He said the whole country is at a standstill and Pakistan is at the peak of its internal and external debts.
Criticising Ishaq Dar, he said Pakistan’s finance minister was a self-confessed money launderer. “There is such a massive trade gap, and a fiscal deficit. But, his only work is jugglery,” he said of Dar.
The PTI chief said nothing could save Sharifs, adding, “When one holds the public office, the onus of proof shifts on him.”
He once again demanded of the authorities to put names of the Sharif family members on the Exit Control List.
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