Marriyum chides Imran for fearing arrest

Minister highlights PTI chairman's 'hypocrisy'

ISLAMABAD:

Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb on Wednesday said that PTI Chairman Imran Khan’s 'Jail Bharo' campaign was only for the helpless party workers as it was, in fact, a 'Jail Se Bacho" campaign for the leadership.

“It is an irony that Imran has obtained protective bail for himself, but at the same time he is asking the innocent PTI workers to court arrest,” she said while addressing a news conference.

The minister said that instead of leading the court arrest drive, Imran was apparently taking refuge in a bunker at Zaman Park in Lahore with a plaster on his leg.

Terming the 'court arrest movement' a conspiracy against the country, she said that it should have commenced with the arrest of Imran, who was "trying to escape from accountability through such tactics".

The minister said that for the last nine months, the former premier had been changing his stance over the dismissal of his government by negating his own statements one after the other.

The incompetent and inefficient former rulers had conspired against the country and ruined its economy since they were involved in foreign funding and Toshakhana theft, she claimed.

Imran, she said, ruled at the federal level for four years and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) for 10 years but miserably failed to deliver to the people.

Marriyum claimed that during his tenure as prime minister, Imran misused the 'state power' to fill his pockets with illegal gains and benefits.

The PTI leadership, she added, sent their political opponents to jail and used public funds to spread baseless propaganda against their political opponents. However, despite having all the state power for four years, they could not prove even a single penny of corruption against them (opponents), she further said.

The entire Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leadership, including Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz, Shehbaz Sharif, and Hamza Shehbaz were placed in death cells to settle political scores, she further said.

The information minister said: "When they could not prove any charges (against the opponents), they pushed the country towards the economic disaster, rendered youth unemployed, and did compromise on the Kashmir issue."

She said that PTI rulers "destroyed" each and every sector of the country and today the people were suffering from its consequences. She also said that Imran had started his narrative nine months ago first with a cipher conspiracy, but he recently confessed that no foreign conspiracy was hatched against his government. He had embarked on a long march from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa towards Islamabad, during which his followers attacked and injured the police personnel, she added.

Imran, she noted, was fully aware that neither there was any global conspiracy behind his ouster from the government nor any such move was harboured in the United States. Castigating the former premier, the minister said that during his ever-changing narrative of the foreign conspiracy, he first blamed Nawaz Sharif, then Mohsin Naqvi and then General (retd) Qamar Bajwa.

The PTI chief during his country-wide country in the last nine months did play a new 'film' every day, and now he was confessing that there had been no external conspiracy against his government, she added.

The minister said that the present government did work round the clock to renegotiate the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, which had earlier been okayed with Imran's signatures. It was Imran, she added, who had handed over the country's economy to the IMF.

"Every day, we are going through the ordeal of how to get the people of Pakistan out of the economic disaster, caused by the Imran Khan-led regime," she further said.

Marriyum said that the courts used to summon Nawaz, Shehbaz Sharif and Hamza Shehbaz every now and then, and they complied with the orders, but Imran did not bother to appear despite being summoned many times, she said.

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi came a few minutes late in the court on Tuesday, his non-bailable arrest warrants were issued, but Imran had been showing no respect to the courts but getting relief every time, she added.

She also said that Imran called his arrest a political vendetta, which was an attempt to mislead the people. She further said that Imran will have to answer the charge-sheet against him.