Shibli flays opposition for not keeping ‘national interests’ supreme

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz has said that opposition parties' boycott of Parliamentary Committee's meeting on Covid-19 once again proved that the national interest, people's health and economic development are not among their priorities.

Addressing media after the Parliamentary Committee meeting, chaired by National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser, the information minister said that the opposition talked about democracy and democratic norms but practically they do not care for them.

There were some national issues which should be above politics and be tackled with consensus strategy, he added.

To a question, Senator Shibli said that under the parliamentary system, both treasury and opposition have their own role which they should fulfil. “The government wants to create consensus on the issue and the opposition will be approached in this regard.”

He said that after failure of the Peshawar rally, held on Sunday, the opposition should adopt a sensible approach and cancel its future rallies.

The federal minister went on to say that the objective of the opposition is to protect the money it plundered when in power but the “PTI government will not give them any concessions”.

For personal gains, he said, the opposition parties were playing with the lives of the people.

Shibli said so far five meetings of the committee had been held out of which four were attended by the opposition and the government implemented the suggestions given by them. “Unfortunately, today they stayed away from the meeting and the PTI and its allies attended it.”

He said that objective of the meeting was to create consensus on how to tackle the second wave of the contagion. “With consensus first wave of the pandemic was successfully defeated and entire world not only appreciated Pakistan's handling of the coronavirus but tried to replicate it.”

The federal minister further said it is need of the hour that “all stakeholders should show unity in larger national interest and set aside political differences to counter the second wave of the pandemic”.

The government will take all possible steps for protection of lives and livelihood of the people with opposition or without opposition, he added.

The opposition, he said, wanted that unemployment should increase and hospitals should be filled to capacity with coronavirus patients so that they could do politics on it.

Senator Shibli said that the people of Pakistan and their own party workers would take the “opposition leadership to task for their irresponsible behaviour”.

“The organisers of the illegal public rallies and the leaders who attended them will be booked under the relevant laws as the government has not issued any NOCs for the rallies following the spike in coronavirus cases.”