Oppositions’ alliance is bound to fail, claims Shibli

Minister says people are politically mature, aware of personal motives of opposition leaders

PESHAWAR:

The federal information minister has claimed that the opposition parties have joined hands to secure their personal interests and that is why their protest movement – the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) – will fail to get public support.

“The opposition is making efforts to create political chaos and despair to hide the massive corruption of its leadership. They have joined hands to protect their loot but the nation has never supported such movements launched to protect personal interests,” said Senator Shibli Faraz on Monday.

The minister was addressing a press conference in Peshawar, a day after the PDM – which includes major position groups including the PPP, the PML-N and the JUI-F – held its second rally in Karachi.

“The opposition leaders have no interests in the problems of the common man and they are only creating hurdles in the way to the development process initiated by the PTI government,” he said.

Shibli said the people are politically mature and aware of the personal motives of the opposition.

“That is why they stayed away from Gujranwala and Karachi rallies where the JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman addressed almost empty chairs.”

Shibli said the opposition is raising slogans against price hike in order to divert people's attention away from the corruption of their leaders. The accountability process would continue indiscriminately and no NRO – secret reprieve – would be given to the looters of the national resources.

He said the people know who has looted the national resources while holding public office and who purchased expensive luxury apartments in London.

The minister claimed that the opposition tried to get an NRO by proposing several amendments in the National Accountability Ordinance 1999 – the law that governs the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) – when the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) related legislation was under consideration.

“The opposition wanted to get a clean chit in corruption cases by proposing to refer only those cases to NAB, which amount to Rs1 billion or above,” the minister said.

He said the opposition parties in their respective governments posted their blued eyes to key posts in important departments like the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) for serving their personal interests.

“As result of these negative policies, the country's exports have remained stagnant and economic growth is highly under pressure,” he said.

The minister said when the PTI came into power in the 2018 general election, the country was facing severe financial crunch and was in the situation of default and bankruptcy.

"But with the grace of Almighty, we turned around the economy and economic indicators are improving with stabilization of rupee." He said the growth oriented economic policies have led to increasing tax collection and exports besides restoring trusts of investors.

"There is a struggle going on between two forces one led by the elements which plundered the national resources and accumulated wealth for personal use during the last 40 years while the other is led by Prime Minister Imran Khan who launched a decisive movement to eliminate corruption."

He said the PTI government has strengthened the national institutions and Pakistan's future is very bright. The minister said by targeting the national institutions, the opposition is not serving the country “rather it is tantamount to weakening the people”.