ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday said that as media has a pivotal role in the promotion of democracy, good governance, ensuring transparency and merit as well as creating awareness among the masses, the government would extend its full support to the media in that respect.
He said that media had played an important role in conveying the ideology of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) to the masses and making it a success.
“If the media would not have been there, I would not have been here (on this position). We will fully support media,” he remarked.
The prime minister expressed these views during a meeting with the delegation of All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS).
Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, Special Assistant to PM on Media Iftikhar Durrani, Senator Faisal Javed and Secretary Information Shafqat Jalil were also in the meeting.
The APNS delegation felicitated PM Khan on being elected as the prime minister and apprised him of the problems faced by the newspaper industry.
The prime minister said that a strategy was being formulated for the payment of arrears of media, pending since the previous governments, so that the problems of the newspaper industry could be resolved.
The prime minister said that PTI had attained this position after a struggle of 22 years, adding it had come to power due to its political efforts and with the support of masses.
“When I entered the politics, my struggle was not against the politicians but the mafias. I know which party has evolved in which nursery. PTI has not grown in any incubation centre,” he remarked.
The prime minister said that no political party in Pakistan’s history had struggled as much as PTI had.
He said that Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who achieved his objective through continued struggle and democratic means, was his ideal in politics.
The prime minister said that his political competition was with those who were criminals and calling them democrats was the insult of democracy.
He said that not a single case of political victimisation was registered during the previous PTI tenure in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Whereas, the prime minister said, over 30 cases were made against him during the previous government’s tenure, including eight in the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and two in the Supreme Court (SC).
Imran Khan said that due to highlighting the Panama Papers issue, he had to face character assassination and for that purpose, women were used.
The prime minister, while making a political comparison of provinces, said that KP, which was earlier famous for not giving the mandate again to any political party, honoured PTI with the two-thirds mandate in 2018 elections.
He said that as PTI is a democratic party, its government did not make any intervention in the recent by-elections in Punjab.
The prime minister said after the 2013 elections, he had demanded the opening of four constituencies and continued to strive for that purpose for a year, but the then government did not open them.