SUKKUR: Opposition Leader in National Assembly Khursheed Shah on Saturday said that everyone has a right to comment on country’s economy and that includes the army chief too, referring to the interior minister’s statement that the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) director general should refrain from commenting on the country’s economy.
Speaking to media in Rohri, Shah said that there is nothing wrong with the army chief commenting on the state of the economy since he was the “commander-in-chief” of the army. A weakened economy means a weakened army, he said.
On Friday, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal had said that Pakistan’s economy is stable and is doing a lot better than it was in 2013 and added that country’s economy is not army’s business.
Interior minister’s response came a day after Maj Gen Ghafoor’s interview on a private TV channel in which he had said: “If the economy is not bad, it is not doing so well either.”
Besides that, Chief of Army Staff Qamar Jawed Bajwa, while addressing economists and businessmen during a seminar in Karachi, said the country’s economy was showing mixed indicators and that the tax base needed to be expanded and economic policies continued to be able to break the “begging bowl”.