Khan vows big show in Lahore as PTI groups make truce

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Thursday vowed to stage a historic rally at Lahore’s Charring Cross on Sunday (May 1), which he termed a ‘warm-up’ for the actual match in Raiwind.

Addressing reporters here, Khan claimed that the top leaderships of the party’s Unity and Nazriyati groups had reconciled their differences over the intra-party elections and are “friends again”. He said the two groups would now synergise their efforts to make the Lahore rally successful. He also announced that the party had decided to restore all wings of the party in order to mount pressure on the government.

According to well informed sources in the PTI, Khan had persuaded Chaudhry Sarwar, Jahangir Tareen and Shah Mahmood Qureshi to resolve their differences “as their infighting would weaken the party just when it was poised to take on the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government”.

“Shah Mahmood Qureshi is spearheading the PTI’s anti-corruption rallies in Sindh so Khan asked Shafqat Mahmood of the Nazriyati Group to shake hands with Chaudhry Sarwar of the Unity Group as a show of reconciliation,” said the source, adding that Khan had also patted Qureshi on the back in a tweet acknowledging his efforts in making the party’s Sindh campaign successful.

Meanwhile talking to reporters, Khan said that according to the Panama leaks, Nawaz Sharif and his family have committed four crimes – corruption, money laundering, tax evasion and concealment of assets.

The PTI chief strongly criticised the prime minister saying that he was touring the country and inaugurating projects of which the ground breaking has already been performed thrice in the past. He said the move would prove to be futile as the time had come for Premier Nawaz to speak the truth and the answer the people.

With regard to Panama Papers disclosures, he said even the Sharif family was giving contradictory statements about the ownership of their Mayfair apartments and questioned where the money came for it, adding, “PM’s daughter has denied the ownership, while one of his sons accepted and another claimed to have rented it.”

“This is the first time that people were demanding accountability of someone in power,” Imran said, promising to compel Nawaz Sharif to explain where the money for his children’s offshore firms came from, and how it went out of the country, and the taxes paid in this respect.

He lamented that corruption makes the structure of the society hollow and that there comes no development and investment in a country with massive corruption.

“The government is unable to raise enough money to run affairs of the country and is repeatedly acquiring huge loans from abroad,” he said.

Khan said that people who consumed poisonous sweets in Layyah died due to non-availability of health facilities.

“The only concern of the prime minister is to construct roads, regardless of the misery of children in the country,” Khan said, adding that Nawaz seeks his own treatment at hospitals abroad.

Subjecting the Orange Line Metro Train project to criticism, he said that it was not meant to facilitate the people of Lahore, but for receiving kickbacks, which again would be siphoned off to offshore accounts.

Khan also lashed out at the PML-N of launching a ‘massive propaganda campaign against political opponents funded by taxpayer money’.

In tweets sent out earlier in the day, Khan said Pakistan has one of the lowest Human Development Index numbers in South Asia, but the federal government was busy spending public money to divert people’s attention from the Sharif family’s alleged offshore accounts and properties.

The PTI chairman’s tweets apparently pointed to half-page advertisements published by the government in several national newspapers.

The advertisement pointed to a clarification by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) admitting that they had incorrectly implied that the prime minister of Pakistan controlled an offshore company.  The advertisement calls on the government’s political opponents to apologise after the clarification.

Pointing to the advertisements, Khan accused the Sharifs of launching the ‘propaganda campaign’ to hide their corruption.

“Why are state institutions like NAB not taking note of this brazen misuse of public money by govt to defend corruption of Sharif family? Why can’t Sharif family use its own money – the billions stashed abroad – for their propaganda campaign instead of misusing public funds?” he asked in the series of tweets.

Khan said that neither did ICIJ apologise for including the prime minister’s name in Panama Papers nor has it removed it yet.

Khan posted a statement of ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle, saying, “The lie about ICIJ retracting on Sharif offshore accounts and apologising also stands exposed in ICIJ statement,” he tweeted.

However, while the statement clearly states that the ICIJ has not apologised to PM Nawaz, it also states that the premier’s name has been mentioned in the papers with reference to his children only.

“As I understand from reading the report, it is claiming that ICIJ has issued an apology and withdrawn all mention of the PM being in the data. Let me be clear. The PM’s name is in the data, in reference to his children,” Ryle said.

The ICIJ had reportedly acknowledged that the inclusion of the PM Nawaz’s name in Panama Papers was a ‘journalistic mistake’, following which the federal cabinet condemned on Wednesday ‘baseless allegations’ levelled against the premier.

A recent clarification issued by the ICIJ provided the government an excellent opportunity to go on offensive.

The ICIJ, the ministers agreed, had clarified that the prime minster had nothing to do with offshore companies and the PM’s name was being maligned in a false propaganda campaign.

The cricketer-turned-politician accused the premier of launching a smear campaign against the charitable Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital (SKMCH) in response to the accusations of acquiring illegal money in Panama leaks against the Sharif family.