Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Member of National Assembly (MNA) Rana Afzal Khan said on Saturday that the army chief should raise his concerns regarding the country’s economy at the National Security Council’s (NSC) meeting rather than doing it publicly.
Talking to reporters, the PML-N leader said that the economy had shown a significant improvement ever since the PML-N government came into power after the 2013 general elections. Back then, the country’s economy was in shambles and the national exchequer had almost gone empty, he added.
Afzal also said that the present government had always worked towards introducing economic reforms due to which there had been a marked improvement in the tax returns system. He said that, “If the army chief is not satisfied with the economic situation and has some concerns over the issue, it is better that he takes it up at the NSC meeting as it was an appropriate forum for registering such complaints.”
On the occasion, the Federal Minister for Water and Electricity Abid Sher Ali said that former president General (r) Pervez Musharraf was solely responsible for the dire economic condition prevalent in the country. He also said that the government respected the judiciary, and except a few, almost all judges had references filed against them with the Supreme Judicial Council.
Speaking on the country’s power crisis issue, Abid said that, “Not a single inch of transmission line was installed in the country during the nine-year tenure of Musharraf and the five-year tenure of the Pakistan People’s Party.” No development projects were started during the tenure of the two previous governments which were later initiated by the present government to control power outages, he added.
The water and power minister further said that the three most important military operations were launched during the PML-N government’s tenure. He said that, “Resources were provided to the armed forces to be fully equipped to fight the menace of terrorism.” Pakistan does not belong to a single institution but to the 22 million citizens residing inside the country, he added.
Moreover, Abid said that the present government was also trying to solve the issues being faced by the business community, while also ensuring that the country keeps moving ahead on the road towards development. Answering a query regarding the ruckus at an accountability court a day earlier, he said the incident took place outside the courtroom and not inside it.
