ISLAMABAD: Imran Khan claims to be leading a struggle against corruption, and yet he is himself guilty of forgery, Minister of State for Information, Broadcasting, National History and Literary Heritage Marriyum Aurangzeb said on Friday.
She was speaking to the media outside the accountability court. “It turns out that the NoC for the construction of Imran Khan’s house is a fake,” she said, adding that Khan relished tweeting on anything under the skies but had not tweeted for the last three days about the status of the NoC submitted on his behalf in the Supreme Court. She said that references, one after another, were being filed against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whereas a man who had submitted fake documents in the court was not proceeded against for two weeks. The minister said that the former prime minister had initiated a war against terrorism in line with his vision, and it was also the PML (N) government, which took the country out of the grey list of the FATF in 2015, mainly due to efforts made by former finance minister Ishaq Dar. She observed that it would also have to be probed as to when and how many times the country was included in grey and black lists in the past.
Marriyum said that during PPP’s government, the country was included in the black list many times.
The minister claimed that all stalwarts of PML-N were standing behind Nawaz Sharif and they would always remain with him in the face of any adversity as a united force.
She asked rhetorically whether removing the name and the symbol of the party from the ECP documents was not pre-poll rigging? She said that in spite of such developments a PML-N backed contestant had secured the Senate seat vacated by Nehal Hashmi. Marriyum expressed her confidence that all of PML-N backed contestants would succeed in the Senate election on March 3. She said that the time for prime ministers elected by public representatives to be ousted by undemocratic means was past now, and only the people would from now onwards bring in prime ministers and assess them purely on the basis of their performance. The minister pointed out that the performance of PML-N was visible to the entire country.
Published in Daily Times, March 3rd 2018.
