ISLAMABAD, Apr 26 (APP):Federal Minister Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb on Tuesday told Imran Khan that no amount of threats, harassment, hooliganism, violence and attacks by him could force the Chief Election Commissioner to resign or to hold snap elections.
The minister, in a media briefing here at the Press Information Department, strongly condemned the horrific blast in Karachi University. She reminded how Nawaz Sharif’s National Action Plan had helped restore peace in the country in consensus with all the provincial governments.
She said it was among the highest priorities of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as well for which he would soon coordinate with the Sindh Government to get to the bottom of the extremely condemnable incident.
She said day in and day out those who were ruling the country and looting the people of Pakistan only just two weeks ago, were today blaming the present government for economic problems and load-shedding.
She said, “The people who took inflation from 3.1 to 16 percent; who buried the country in Rs 43,000 billion; who unemployed millions and pushed millions more below the poverty line, had started questioning the current government under PM Shehbaz as to why hasn’t everything they destroyed in four years, been fixed in two weeks!”
The situation, she said, could only be responded through the famous words of Khawaja Asif, “One should have some shame and some dignity”. “This shameless line of question will not fool anyone, because the people of Pakistan know now that this foreign-conspiracy narrative and Tuesday’s attack on the Election Commission was just ways to cover up their catastrophic reign in power that led to historic inflation, unemployment and collapse of the economy and governance.”
“The PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf), which has become so fond of questioning everything and protesting everywhere, must be reminded that when the opposition dared to question it government, Imran Khan locked them up. When the Parliament tried to question their disastrous rule, Imran Khan locked up the Parliament. When the media questioned their nightmare rule, the media moguls were locked up by Imran Khan. When the Judiciary questioned the unconstitutional actions of their tyrannical dystopian rule, Imran Khan attacked the judiciary and the courts. Now he attacked the Election Commission to harass it not to reveal the truth about the PTI’s illegal foreign funding case, that had been buried by the party for the past eight years,” she lambasted.
The minister said she expected that on Tuesday, Imran Khan would finally show up before the court and defend himself and his party in the face of the damning allegations backed by irrefutable evidence. She thought for once Imran would show up at the court after eight years of running away from it.
She expected that Imran would answer who took the $ 7 million that was transferred into the accounts of PTI employees; who used the money given in the name of Disaster Management by the overseas Pakistanis and the Shaukat Khanum Hospital that were used for party, the minister added.
She stressed again that no cussing, hooliganism, harassment, threats, and violence would force the Chief Election Commissioner to resign or to hold elections before time. Elections would be held at a time when the ECP had completed the constitutional obligation and when the people of Pakistan would want elections to be held. The country would not be allowed to be held hostage to Imran’s threats and hooliganism, she added.
Marriyum said, “Over the just the past two weeks, the PML-N government has restored 20 out of the 27 power plants shut by the PTI regime. The shortage of fuel will also be addressed and fuel will be arranged by May 7.”
The current loadshedding, she said, was a gift of the incompetence and corruption of the Imran government because the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government had left a Pakistan with zero power outages. “The dearth of fuel for farmers and power-plants is a result the terrible planning by the PTI regime.”
Marriyum reminded that she once said all the threats by Imran Khan to the opposition would turn into questions raised by the people of Pakistan over the PTI’s disastrous rule. The people now knew that Imran Khan was a poster-boy for theft, corruption, threats, hooliganism, mafia patronage, deception, fraud and incompetence.
The people were not interested in the Imran-circus anymore, and they wanted answers of how and why did Imran loot their sugar, flour, electricity, gas and medicine, she added. The inflation in the country that was gripping the country and might do so for a while more, was Imran’s fault.
She said Imran did all his foreign trips on state expenditure; spent Rs 1 billion on his helicopter rides, whereas the visit of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was strictly on his personal expenditure.
Talking of the letter issued by the Foreign Ministry, she said it was standard operating procedure that was started during the damned Imran era. The letter was not issued on the instructions of any government functionary but was issued as an SOP.
She told the media that the official delegation comprised of only 13 persons. The KSA visit was extremely strategic as matters relating to industrial zones and agricultural sector would be taken up, besides other economic exchanges to benefit Pakistan .
Answering a question she said there was no shortage of diesel but was a case of hoarding which was being administratively being controlled which would reap fruit over the next 48 hours.
To another query about the results of the meeting with IMF, she said the finance minister was on his way back and any speculations would be put to rest once he returned.
In response to another question, she said the details of the change in assets of Imran Khan and Mrs Imran Khan’s frontperson for corruption, Farah Gogi, during the the PTI government’s period had been released to the media and a registration of a case was also in the works. The links to the mega corruption to Imran would soon be revealed and legal action would take its course.
