Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb on Wednesday said so far no consultation took place on the name of a caretaker prime minister who would take over the country’s rein after completion of incumbent National Assembly’s tenure.
Addressing to the media queries here at a news conference, she said the matter would be brought before the public whenever a decision would be taken in this regard.
She said the coalition government did not believe in holding consultation behind the closed doors like that of Imran Khan who offered life-time extension to the former army chief to ensure his return to the power.
Marriyum said the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief now stood exposed for his “treachery and enmity towards Pakistan as he has been persistently pursuing anti-state agenda at the behest of his foreign masters”.
“He is least concerned about the national interests, particularly the sensitivity of defence and economic issues,” she added.
The minister said the PTI chief was begging the United States to ban military aid to Pakistan, which manifested his anti-state mindset.
She said he was not pursuing a political agenda rather he was “toeing the line of his foreign masters who wanted to see Pakistan as a failed state”. He was hatching conspiracies against the country under a well-planned strategy by brainwashing the youth with the help artificial intelligence using foreign funds.
Once the brainwashing of youth was completed, she said, his facilitators resorted to accomplish his anti-state missions by executing the conspiracies and the May 9 tragedy was a case study in that regard.
The entire nation witnessed as how his facilitators had deputed the workers at sensitive installations to set them on fire just for accomplishing his mission, she added.
Now, she said, he was fully exposed before the masses and that was why his nefarious designs could not work at all.
She said he might think that he could mislead the world while speaking to foreign media with two flags in the background. “Yet your conspiracies, anti-state activities and treachery have been exposed before the people and you no longer can mislead the nation,” she reiterated.
His anti-state missions were destined to fail as the country was protected by its 220 million people, she added.
Marriyum said like a suicide bomber, the PTI chief had inflicted massive damage to the economy, rendering a large number of people unemployed and halting the country’s development process.
The minister said the provision of maximum relief to the people in the budget was the government’s topmost priority and in that regard, consultative meetings were underway.
She said the economy was in a shamble when the coalition government took charge last year, which had now been put in the right direction.
The government’s focus was on reducing the prices of flour, cooking oil, wheat and other edible items, she added.
The minister said the government had given the historic Kisaan package last year, which led to record wheat production causing substantial reduction in its price. Now further incentives would be offered for farmers in its next phase in the budget, she added.
Moreover, she said, a major uplift programme for the youth would also be announced in the coming budget.
She said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s last government tenure was a journey of development and prosperity.
During the period from 2013 to 2018 , she said, the economy was stabilized, with commencing of work on China Pakistan Economic Corridor, completion of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, generation of 14,000 MW electricity and rooting out the scourge of terrorism.
She recalled that the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif did pursue the national interests instead of the personal ones by giving an opportunity to parties with majority in the provinces to form the governments there.
He very well knew that political stability in the country would eventually lead to economic stability, which was imperative for prosperity and development, Marriyum added.
She said with the PTI chief’s installation as prime minister in 2018, a certain mindset was imposed on Pakistan. For four years in power, they ruined the economy and made tens of thousands jobless, besides steep rise in the prices of wheat flour, electricity, gas and medicines, and taking down the GDP growth from 6.2% to negative.
She said it was the PTI chairman, who himself had signed the agreement with the IMF and then first violated it and later went for its suspension. In fact, he and his confidants were funded from abroad for destroying and harming the country, the minister claimed.
She said the PTI chief concocted the story of the cipher and then built a narrative that a foreign country had ousted him from the power. However, the narrative eventually relegated to interim Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi.
“Whenever the staff level agreement with the IMF was about to reach, this person resorted to arson and chaos,” she said while recalling the time when his provincial governments’ finance ministers wrote letters to the Fund for sabotaging the programme.
Marriyum said now he was making a hue and cry over “human rights violations” but in fact those people who were being tried under the law were miscreants involved in attacks on sensitive installations.
On May 9, they burnt government property, set the building of Radio Pakistan on fire, attacked sensitive buildings, which was no politics, she said, adding “if the economy is not getting stable today, it is this mission and mindset that is working against the country, which is responsible for it.”
This person, she said, did not want end to inflation and terrorism in the country.
She said that in Karachi, a PTI activist Imran Mehboob was identified as the person instigating people to damage national property, but the PTI chief had called him Colonel Tanveer to mislead the people.
Marriyum said the PTI chief stooped too low that he claimed his party female workers were raped in police custody, but the latter themselves contradicted his claim.
