PPP, PML-N should stand on their feet: Fawad

Minister says media enjoys unprecedented freedom

ISLAMABAD:

Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry on Wednesday said that the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) should first learn to stand on their feet before setting off to oust the government.

The minister made the remarks on the micro-blogging site a day after PPP chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari took a jibe at the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, saying that the “real face of change is historic inflation and unemployment”.

یہ بات بھی ذہن میں رکھیں کامیابی صرف تنقید سے نہیں مل سکتی کوئ متبادل ایجنڈا بھی ہوتا ہے تو لوگ متوجہ ہوتے ہیں، دونوں جماعتوں کی قیادت حکومت ہٹانے کی خواھش کی بجائے اپنے پاؤں پر کھڑا ہونا سیکھے، بڑی اصلاحات کیلئے بھی تجاویز دیں،

— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) December 1, 2021

Addressing a rally held to mark the party’s 54th foundation day in Peshawar, Bilawal claimed that the “dummy” chief minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa tried to stop today’s public gathering at the behest of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

“The mammoth crowd present in the rally is proof that people of Peshawar are with PPP,” he added.

Fawad welcomed the PPP's public meeting in Peshawar and said that Pakistan needed national parties. He further said that the PML-N should also expand its horizon out of central Punjab, where it currently enjoys a stronghold.

کل پشاور میں پیپلز پارٹی کا جلسہ خوش آئند ہے، پاکستان کو وفاقی جماعتوں کی ضرورت ہے نون لیگ کو بھی سنٹرل پنجاب سے باہر نکلنا چاہئے ان جماعتوں کی قیادت بد قسمتی سے بہت سطحی ہےاور ان کے پاس کوئ ایجنڈا بھی نہیں لیکن بہرحال علاقائ اور شدت پسند سیاست تب ہی ختم ہو گی جب قومی سیاست ہو گی

— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) December 1, 2021

"The leadership of the parties is unfortunately very superficial and they have no agenda. But, in any case, regional and extremist politics will end only when there is national politics," the minister added.

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He also said that the two parties will only be able to attract the masses if they provided an alternate agenda as “success cannot be achieved by criticism alone”.

Meanwhile, the minister said that for the first time under the Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Act 2021, working journalists in Pakistan had been given the rights being enjoyed by the journalists in advanced democracies.

Addressing the signing ceremony of “Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Act 2021”, he said that the credit for the Media Professionals Act 2021 went to Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari who made tireless efforts for its finalisation and enactment.

A section in Pakistan had been trying to give the impression that the press was not free here, Fawad said, adding if there was no free press in Pakistan then there was no free press anywhere in the world.

”When it comes to press freedom, we compare ourselves not with the Third World and the Muslim World, but with the First World. We have no laws of defamation, so we have more freedom of the press than the first world,” said Fawad.