LAHORE:
PML-N President and National Assembly Opposition Leader Shehbaz Sharif has said that political victimisation of the opposition won't solve the national crisis created by the incumbent government nor will it serve the nation.
“PML-N Quaid Nawaz Sharif's government ended 20-hour electricity load-shedding and provided affordable transport, medicine, laptops, scholarships to students and health card to the ailing,” Shehbaz said while addressing a news conference at the party’s Model Town Lahore Secretariat on Monday. He was flanked by PML-N Punjab spokesperson Azma Bukhari, Deputy Secretary General Attaullah Tarrar and party leader Miftah Ismail.
“The PMLN was being punished for serving the masses with prison time, plethora of fictitious politically motivated cases and court hearings,” the party president said, adding that the country was brutally looted over the past three years with the worst corruption and incompetence in the history of the country.
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The PMLN president said the unscheduled, unannounced load-shedding in Pakistan, especially Balochistan, had made the life of the people miserable.
“Is this the New Pakistan for which the opposition is being victimised and demonised?” he questioned.
He said the fictitious and vengeful cases filed against him, former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, party Secretary General Ahsan Iqbal and leader Khawaja Asif could not prove a single penny of corruption.
He questioned why the vengeful “Imran government” couldn't find a dime of corruption in power projects worth billions of dollars.
However, he said, “The PML-N saved Rs250 billion of the nation in these projects.”
“The current load-shedding is a product of mismanagement, incompetence and corruption of the PTI government,” he said.
He claimed that the PML-N started the Trimmu power project which was scheduled to be completed by 2019, but it is still incomplete because the incumbent government had “no capacity to complete a single project”.
For the last three years, the PTI was favouring their blue-eyed people, which was why this project could not be completed. “The Trimmu power plant was supposed to generate 1,263 megawatts of electricity and its delay had just caused a cost overrun and loss of Rs35 billion,” he lambasted.
He recalled that the prime minister had boasted that he would build 350 dams in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, but those “only exist in Imran's imagination”.
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Haveli Bahadar, Bhikki and Trimmu power plants produced electricity at half of NEPRA's price and yet PML-N is being paid back for these services with worst political victimisation. He claimed that all allegations had been rejected by the courts and were a source of shame and embarrassment for the PTI government.
The National Assembly Opposition Leader said the coal fired thermal power projects in Sahiwal and Port Qasim were the most economical power projects of the world. “These projects were built in 32 months in China whereas in Pakistan they were built in 22 months, seven months ahead of time which saved billions for the country.”
Targeting PML-N, is equal to targeting Pakistan's journey to progress and development, he added.
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