‘PM will not resign on anyone’s demand’

• Marriyum says politics of maligning, pressurising institutions must be abandoned now

State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb on Saturday said that Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif would not resign on demand of anyone, as he was given the electoral mandate by the people and he is answerable to them.

Talking to reporters, she said that politics of maligning and pressurising national institutions must be abandoned now. She condemned the statement of Pakistan People’s Party leader Senator Aitzaz Ahsan against the institutions defending geographical frontiers of Pakistan.

She said that the constitutional institutions and the law enforcement agencies including the armed forces were pride of the nation therefore such irresponsible utterances should be avoided in future. She said that the replies to the questions of the joint investigation team (JIT) have to be given by the prime minister but one failed to understand why Imran Khan felt so perturbed about it.

In the next elections, the people would totally reject the elements which were trying to disrupt the development agenda of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, she said. The opposition parties were weary of the popularity of Nawaz Sharif because they knew that if the mega development projects launched by the government were completed they would be wiped out of the political arena, she said.

“Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had created a new history by presenting three generations of his family for accountability and answering questions about businesses established by the family including his deceased father and children,” the state minister said. To a question, she said that the Sharif family had provided record of the businesses of the late Mian Muhammad Sharif dating back to 45 to 50 years and if there was any gap in the information, the JIT would be provided those details.

Rejecting the assumption that the court had rejected letter of the Qatari prince, she said that it was a verified document and the JIT would be satisfied about its authenticity. She reminded that when Imran made hue and cry of rigging after 2013 elections, the prime minister wrote a letter to the Supreme Court for the formation of a commission to investigate the issue.

She said that during sit-in and protest rallies, Imran ridiculed the national and constitutional institutions and abused his political opponents including the prime minister. When the judicial commission on alleged rigging announced its findings, Imran started ridiculing the institutions, she said. He (Imran) used Panama Papers as political crutches and started targeting the Sharif family, she said.

Prime Minister Nawaz proposed formation of a JIT on the Panama issue and then he wrote a letter to the Supreme Court for the formation of a commission. Now, after one year and 17 days, the JIT is being constituted which was endorsement of the prime minister’s stance. The state minister said that answers to all questions related to Panama case would be provided in the JIT.

She said that the JIT had not been constituted on the basis of the prayers of the petitioners in the Panama case, as all their prayers had been rejected by the court as they were supported by useless documents downloaded from the internet. Criticising the PPP ledership, she said that after committing record corruption in their tenure, they still had the audacity to agitate on the issue of corruption which was not only strange but also a sign of the doomsday.

Marriyum rubbished the claims of former president Asif Ali Zardar in a speech at Jhang that the prime minister had failed to overcome the energy crisis, saying that during the last four years record number of power projects had been launched and by the next year, the problem of loadshedding would be overcome.

She reminded that when PML-N came to power in 2013, the country was facing the threat of default due to the PPP misrule but the present government under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif stabilised the sick economy, revived industrial sector and launched historic health and educational reforms programmes.

If the PPP could clean Karachi city, it would be quite an achievement, she said. The state minister said that Imran Khan in 2013 introduced the culture of abusing the political opponents and ridiculing the national institutions. She said that recently the Election Commission in its verdict wrote that Imran Khan was an un-civilised person and his party was trying to undermine the national institutions.

She said that media should highlight development projects launched by the government to bring quantum change in the lives of the common people. She said almost all political parties have governments in the provinces, so instead of indulging in leg pulling of the federal government they should strive to come up to the expectations of their voters.