Foreign funding: PTI raises objections over PML-N, PPP records

Habib urges election supervisor to decide matter as early as possible

ISLAMABAD:

The PTI counsel, while giving arguments before the ECP scrutiny committee, has raised objections, saying the major political parties – namely PPP and PML-N – are still dilly-dallying over submission of their records of alleged illegal funding.

In a meeting of the election supervisor’s scrutiny committee held on Monday, the PTI deplored that four years had passed since the panel was formed in 2018 yet the PML-N and PPP had not submitted their records, claiming that both the parties received “illicit” funding.

PML-N lawyer Jahangir Khan Jadoon and PTI counsel Rana Muhammad Afzal appeared before the committee.

Talking to the media after attending the meeting of the scrutiny committee, PTI Information Secretary Farrukh Habib stressed that the party has requested the commission to adjudicate upon the matter without delaying it any further, adding that it was the duty of the election supervisor to enforce the law.

The PTI leader emphasised that the ECP had to decide the matter within a period of 30 days. “We have raised our objections today which will be looked into by the scrutiny committee,” he added.

“Late Benazir Bhutto had revealed in her book that Nawaz Sharif received money from al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden to contest elections against her in 1990,” he said. "The PPP and the PML-N concealed their accounts, whereas our record is clean and transparent,” he claimed.

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Referring to the former ruling party’s dissident lawmakers – against whom the PTI had approached the ECP seeking their disqualification for violating party principle – Farrukh said: “Tomorrow (Tuesday), the ECP will hold an important hearing on those who sold their conscience. If the dissident members partook [in the no-confidence vote against former prime minister Imran Khan], then it merits direct disqualification of the lawmakers.”

‘PTI kept delaying the matter’

Meanwhile, PML-N lawyer Jahangir Jadoon, speaking to the media, claimed that ever since the constitution of the scrutiny committee, the PTI had been deploying delaying tactics.

He said that the PML-N had submitted its record to the panel, adding that not a single cheque the party received was illegal.
The foreign funding case was pending since Nov 14, 2014, and it was filed by Akbar S Babar who had alleged that there were financial irregularities in the PTI’s funding from Pakistan and abroad.

On January 4 this year, the ECP scrutiny committee, formed in March 2018, submitted its report on the PTI’s foreign funding case after 95 hearings.