PML-N condemns PM’s remarks on media

Party spokesperson says such statements are ‘regrettable and shameful’

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Information Secretary Marriyum Aurangzeb on Friday strongly condemned Prime Minister Imran Khan’s statement regarding “presence of mafia” in newspapers.

On Thursday, during his speech at the foundation stone laying ceremony of Jalalpur Canal in Pind Dadan Khan in Jhelum district, the PM said the year 2020 would be tough on the plunderers of national exchequer.

He added: “The mafia is present in the Federal Board of Revenue and other government institutions, in politics and in newspapers. Newspapers carry bad news [against the government] every day.

Those journalists who had benefited from the corrupt system in the past were now writing against his administration”.

In a statement, the party spokesperson said: “It is shameful, regrettable and highly condemnable that the incompetent PM had called media a mafia.”

Marriyum added: “A person is involved in money laundering and foreign funding, imprisoning his opponents in death rows, closing down the parliament, and risking the livelihoods and businesses of citizens” was referring to the media as a mafia.

“The country is being ruled by bullying and intimidation techniques,” the PML-N spokesperson said while condemning the summoning of party’s Deputy Secretary General Attaullah Tarrar to the Federal Investigation Agency office the other day.

“Tarrar is a young and competent politician. Two generations of his family have served Pakistani politics with devotion, competence and transparency,” said Marriyum.

The former information minister said that such acts of harassment are discouraging. “When the regime of the selected PM could not find any corruption, they found a new excuse to disturb and harass people through illegal orders,” she said.

Marriyum questioned under which law such notice was being issued. She alleged that Bashir Memon refused to issue such orders, which is why Wajid Zia was appointed as the FIA DG.

“Wajid Zia will always be remembered as a tool. His legacy will be being the chief stooge of the illegitimate, incompetent regime of the selected Prime Minister,” said the PML-N spokesperson.

She added that notices being issued to Attaullah Tarrar, Pervez Rasheed and Azma Bukhari are “illegal and an act of misuse of authority to bully and intimidate”.

The PML-N spokesperson alleged that it is exactly the way Judge Arshad Malik was issued notices. An investigative team should have probed who “pressured and bullied” Malik to give a verdict, which could only be characterised as a “murder of justice,” she said.