LAHORE – Broken promises of the Zardari regime and poor performance of the federal government made it inevitable for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to part ways with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Punjab, PML-N Information Secretary Ahsan Iqbal said on Sunday.
“The PML-N is now free from shackles of the PPP coalition and will focus all its energies on improving its government in Punjab showing that corruption-free, merit-based and citizen-centered governance is possible,” he added. Ahsan said that corruption, inflation, unemployment and poverty have crossed all limits and were outcome of the politics of patronage and bad governance of the government.
The PML-N information secretary said that the PML-N went out of the way to help the federal government in implementing the reforms agenda, which the country needs desperately and urgently but unfortunately the Zardari regime showed no seriousness and concern. As a result, there was no option left with the PML-N but to disengage with the PPP in order to clearly demonstrate that it is not a party to Zardari regime’s politics of plunder and loot, Ahsan said.
He said that the Charter of Democracy (CoD) commits both the parties to follow the politics of good governance and tackle corruption. The PML-N information secretary said that for upholding the spirit of the CoD, the PML-N took the decision to part ways with a government, which has failed to take tangible steps for tackling corruption and implementing good governance to serve the citizens through merit-based public sector enterprises.
Ahsan said that the federal government could have easily passed the Accountability Commission Law pending before the National Assembly for the last two years to set-up an independent and transparent accountability mechanism in the country to check corruption across the board with complete autonomy and effective powers.
He said that appointment of competent, clean and credible CEOs for state enterprises such as the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), steel mills, railways, Pakistan State Oil (PSO), National Insurance Corporation Limited (NICL), Oil and Gas Development Corporation (OGDC) and others could have been easily made.
The PML-N leader said that there was no progress on expenditure cutting but the Punjab government slashed its expenditures by over Rs 6 billion. “The PML-N’s 10-point agenda was not partisan but for economic stabilisation and rehabilitation. If the federal government had wholeheartedly accepted the agenda and shown its resolve to implement it, the federal government would have been its principle beneficiary.”
He said that the PML-N has expressed its displeasure with the Zardari regime for breaking promises. “The PML-N hopes that this will force the Zardari regime to reconsider its priorities and performance and make it implement the reform agenda. In the last three years, no corruption scandal of the PML-N government in Punjab has surfaced showing that if there is a political will at the top, corruption can be curbed,” he said.
He said that the PML-N would continue to monitor Zardari regime’s performance very closely and if no concrete steps were taken to curb corruption, it would play its democratic role to check corruption in government departments.
