ISLAMABAD: PMLN President and National Assembly Opposition Leader Shehbaz Sharif has said that Imran Niaizi was taking steps to damage Pakistan’s foreign, national and domestic interests before being ousted to intentionally make life extremely difficult for the next government.
Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Shehbaz said Imran Niaizi had very cunningly laced the path to the no-confidence motion with land-mines and booby-traps which the joint opposition would need to navigate very carefully through. Imran wants to destroy every sector, domestic and foreign, before he leaves to make life difficult for the joint opposition when they come into power, he said. The joint opposition would seek good diplomatic relations with all countries based on mutual and equal respect, he assured.
He said over the past four years Imran’s narrative of anti-corruption campaign against the opposition had failed miserably as nothing was proven against any opposition leaders in the dozens of cases filed against them. Every single one of the so-called mega scandals cooked up by Imran Niazi through the NAB-Niazi alliance. Meanwhile the NAB-Niazi alliance totally ignored the mega corruption scandals of this government including the BRT Peshawar, Malam Jabba sugar scandal, flour scandal, medicine scandal and producing super expensive electricity through fossil fuel to benefit blue-eyed illegal profiteers, while cheaper electricity generation plants were not used, he added. Eye wash commissions only worked to delay and exonerate the culprits.
Meanwhile all courts in Pakistan and abroad vindicated PMLN Leaders. Even the UK’s National Crime Agency said there was no money laundering or corruption committed by Shehbaz after 2 years of exhaustive investigations. Even after such clear exoneration Imran still had the audacity of once again peddling the same false narrative that the PMLN leaders had millions of dollars of corruption stacked outside Pakistan.
He reminded how Imran was so fond of the US and President Trump that he said he had won the world cup during his visit to Washington as the Prime Minister and now all of a sudden he was propagating this narrative of the US being a villain and conspirator against Pakistani democracy.
“Imran started by damaging Pakistan-China ties by criticizing the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Pervez Khattak started it, followed by Imran Khan and Assad Umer who went overboard with false propaganda against the CPEC. They said the loans were taken from China at 8 percent whereas as not a single one was over 2.25 percent while majority was not even loans and were investments by Chinese businessmen. Assad Umer later had to eat his words in the UK media. On top of this the PTI government accused China of corruption in the CPEC alleged that they had paid $ 17 million in kickbacks to CM Punjab. This madness by PTI reached such levels that I had to tell Imran Khan and PTI to either put-up or shut-up. That was when they backed off. Imran not only damaged diplomatic ties between Pakistan and China but also hurt the sentiments of Chinese people for Pakistanis with his baseless allegations”, he said.
Shehbaz said Imran did not stop there he went for another most treasured and trusted friend of Pakistan and his Foreign Minister lashed out against Saudi Arabia which created bad blood between the two historic friendly countries. And now he had gone straight for Washington.
He said, “If Imran was so concerned by the damning contents and threats in the letter from Washington, why did he invite the US delegation to the OIC Conference? Why did your Foreign Minister say that a wonderful relation had developed between the US and OIC countries? Why did your government pledge to celebrate 75 years of amazing diplomatic ties with the US? Everyone knows that this was Imran Khan’s last ditch desperate Hail Mary pass to dodge the writing on the wall, that Imran had lost the no-confidence vote”.
Imran came into power unconstitutionally; even then the opposition chose a constitutional way to oust him, he maintained. Niazi crushed the people of Pakistan with historic inflation and made it impossible for people to feed their families, cater to their health and educational needs. He pushed millions under poverty line and snatched livelihood of tens of millions, he reminded. The opposition had showed on Thursday that they had the numbers and Imran was trying to punish the nation for his disastrous foreign policy, domestic policy and economic policy. the opposition would not allow that to happen, he stressed. The nation would not accept this PTI circus anymore, he said.
Responding to a question he said that we had warned the security agencies that they would be responsible if parliamentarians faced any mob harassment or violence from PTI supporters on the day of voting.
He also slammed PTI’s last minute demand for nomination papers for the election of Chief Minister Punjab on a 20 minute notice. He said the joint opposition would consult over the matter and the decision would be made after consensus. He said the first priority of the joint opposition when it comes into power would be to provide some level of relief to the people of Pakistan for which strategy had already been devised.
He said the National Security Committee’s statement did not mention a single word about a grant international conspiracy which Imran was ranting about. He pointed out that Imran said to Donald Trump that Pakistan and the US were partners in the War on Terror and now he was saying that he was always against this war. Imran basically is a drowning man catching at every straw that he sees and in his desperation was damaging the national interest, he opined.
He said the so-called self-proclaimed patriot Imran commends the neutrality of security institutions in India while he paints the neutrality of Pakistani security institutions in a negative light, which was a manifestation of his own mind. Shehbaz said He said that an intelligent foe is better than a dim-witted friend and Imran can be perfectly described by this proverb. He said he and his allies were granted bail on merit by the courts and getting that cancelled wasn’t on the whims and fancies of PTI.
