Nawaz a corrupt politician: Raja Riaz

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-backed Punjab Assembly (PA) Opposition Leader Raja Riaz Ahmad called Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif a corrupt politician on Tuesday.
Flanked by PPP’s deputy parliamentary leader in PA Shaukat Basra, MPA Makhdoom Irteza, Raja Riaz rapped the PML-N president in a press conference held at the Punjab Assembly cafeteria here on Tuesday. He said Nawaz had been involved in corruption during the era of military dictator General Zia-ul Haq.
Terming Nawaz Sharif the proverbial Ali Baba and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif as ‘chief of his thieves’, Raja Riaz said the duo were supervising the financial management of the province.
He alleged that on the one hand Nawaz Sharif was raising hue and cry over implementation of judicial verdicts while on the other PML-N’s Punjab government was patronising court absconders such as Rana Maqbool.
Raja demanded the Punjab government produce Rana Maqbool in the Sindh High Court if his party respected the courts. He blamed Nawaz Sharif for “hatching conspiracies against the democratic government”. Raja said the PML-N was afraid of its ‘expected’ defeat in Senate elections in March 2012 and that was why the party was trying to create confrontation among the national institutions.
He said the PML-N leadership, after the verdict of an accountability court in the SGS case, should apologise to the nation and President Asif Ali Zardari for fabricating cases against the PPP leader.
He criticised the Punjab government for ‘neglecting’ people of the Saraiki belt and added that the PPP would take up the issue of reduced allocation to the region from Rs 70 billion to Rs 10 billion.