Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain on Sunday claimed that four of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leaders were “hell-bent on removing Nawaz Sharif from the party”.
Addressing a gathering in Lahore, Fawad said there was a “rat race going on among senior PML-N members as to who would lead the party next”. “Four top-most party leaders want to remove PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif in a bid to take over the party’s leadership.”
The federal minister even claimed that the four members he was referring to “even went out to meet someone and confessed that since Nawaz had treated the country in a bad manner, they should instead be given a chance to lead the party”. He also spoke about the “lack of coordination and trust” among opposition parties.
The minister further said that Nawaz, who is currently living on the most expensive property in London, was directly responsible for the ongoing inflation in the country, as he was the former premier of Pakistan.
Fawad said Pakistan took only Rs6 trillion loan from 1947 to 2008 and strengthened armed forces, purchased Gwadar, built the capital city (Islamabad) and the country became a nuclear power, but loans worth Rs23 trillion was taken from 2008 to 2018 when the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the PML-N were in power. He said the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had to repay $55 billion loan in its five-year tenure due to bad economic policies of the past regimes.
So far, the PTI government had repaid $32 billion loan during the past three years, he said, and said that owing to the bad governance and plunder of the past rulers, the country was facing inflation today. “Those who fled after looting and plundering the national exchequer are now giving lectures on economy,” he said.
He said the PPP had taken the right decision by stopping new gas schemes and at the end of its tenure in 2013, there was no revolving loan on gas. He said when Shahid Khaqan Abbasi left in 2018, he left a circular debt of Rs197 billion on gas, as the schemes he started required Rs90 billion annually for completion.
He said that some people had the perception that Imran Khan lost popularity due to inflation, but they were wrong, as he had a vote bank everywhere from Karachi to Khyber, Lahore to Peshawar and Kashmir to Gilgit-Baltistan. He said that elections would be held on 1,100 national and provincial assembly constituencies and there was no other party except the PTI that could field its candidates on so many seats.
“PML-N is party of Punjab, PPP of Sindh and JUI of some areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” Fawad maintained. He said that when the election time would come, the PTI leadership would show how elections were contested.
He said the government had borne the health expenses of all journalists, providing state-of-the-art healthcare facilities to them. He said that journalists and their families would be able to avail treatment facility of up to Rs1 million per annum from any public or private hospital under the scheme launched by the prime minister.
He opined that the private sector’s involvement in the health and education sectors was imperative to solve the problems. He said the ‘health card’ programme would provide an opportunity to the private sector to invest in the health sector, as people wanted better treatment.
