PML-N slams PM Imran’s presser

Party spokesperson says PTI should start accountability from within the party

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has strongly reacted to the prime minister’s press conference and said he should look at people next to him who “are known for corruption”.

In a statement on Sunday, party’s spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb urged Prime Minister Imran Khan to “look at the people next to him… who have become guards of the living symbols of corruption”.

This kind of press conference, she said, could not hide the poor performance of his government. “You have snatched bread from the poor people in the name of fight against corruption… now you don’t try to cover corruption within your party,” she added.

Marriyum said the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman should stop crying and answer why he was depriving the poor of its means of living by increasing the electricity and gas tariff. She said that the premier’s nervousness was very obvious from the very first day of the arrest of PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif.

How much of the looted national wealth had been brought back from abroad, she asked. “Why Imran does not investigate the tens of millions of bucks laundered through Hundi into the accounts of PTI employees,” she alleged.

She said that was pointed out four years back. A fifth writ petition was filed in the Islamabad High Court just to hide this trail of money, she added.

The PML-N spokesperson criticised the PTI for its “incompetence”, saying that rather than acting upon the revelations of Justice (retd) Wajihuddin, Gen (retd) Hamid Khan and Akbar S Babar, the PTI victimised ‘these whistleblowers’.

She said, “Imran Khan’s sisters own properties of Rs60 billion in Dubai even though they have no means of income except that they are members of the boards of charity organisations. When is he going to start investigation into this?”

She said the PTI chairman had been making claims of change for the last 22 years, but a man who had joined the party just one month back had been made CM.

Marriyum said rather than making the institutions efficient, the PM was using them for revenge. She called the PM’s cabinet ‘a group of cronies which will prove to be the most corrupt cabinet ever’.

She said the PTI chief should tell people why he took Rs45 billion worth of loans for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) province and where the money was spent. “Why was the power theft amounting to Rs65 billion not checked in K-P?” she said, adding how the K-P metro bus budget reached Rs80 billion.

On the austerity measures, the PML-N leader asked the PM to announce a date for auctioning foreign properties of Zulfiqar Bukhari, Aleema Khan, Aleem Khan and Jehangir Tareen.

She said the government could not hide their failure on their 100-days plan behind these “illegal” arrests of the opposition leadership. “Either fulfil your promise of bringing back those fictional 300 billion rupees of Nawaz Sharif to Pakistan or apologies to the people of Pakistan for lying to them repeatedly,” she demanded.

“Where is the Rs6 billion that went into the K-P Ehtesab Commission? Again you are making a hue and cry and telling lies,” she said.

Marriyum alleged that the PM’s sisters were among the top of those who had made properties abroad.

The Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) suffered a loss of 48 per cent due to line losses and non-payment of electricity bills during each of 2016 and 2017, she alleged. Pesco got electricity of Rs130 billion and suffered an overall loss of Rs60 billion, she said, adding that during 2017 and 2018, the total loss the K-P government suffered on this count was Rs55 billion.

She said the foreign loan of the K-P government was more than Rs50 billion during 2017 and 2018. The PM would have to tell the nation why and how the stock exchange fell 40 per cent, she added.

“The PM must answer the nation on its failures in K-P,” she demanded.