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PIND DADAN KHAN: Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain on Friday said the opposition with diminished public support was not in a position to hold a long march to Islamabad to oust the democratically elected the government.
“We will send ‘Doliyan’ (palanquins) to bring you (to Islamabad) on shoulders, as, in my opinion, you are not even able to hold a walk let alone the long march,” he said while addressing the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) workers here.
The opposition leaders should first stand on their own feet, if they wanted to launch a long march, he added. However, “they have no guts and political prowess to challenge Prime Minister Imran Khan who fully enjoys the trust of the whole nation.”
Fawad said the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Jamiat Ulema-e Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) were poles apart as the former was a liberal party and the latter a religious one. But the two got united due to dearth of workers faced by the PPP, which believed that the students of seminaries could be used to hold the long march.
They were living in a fool’s paradise if they believed that the seminary students could be used to oust a democratically elected government, he said, adding the opposition would not succeed in their nefarious designs.
To oust a government, he said, one had to do struggle, build up an ideology and establish strong contact with the public; otherwise there was not an iota of a chance for success.
He said the opposition leaders would not be able to bring a no-confidence motion against the prime minister as their own family members did not trust them. They were destined to fail as even their own parliamentarians would not stand by them, he added.
The politics of the Sharif and Zardari families was about to end, Fawad said, advising their scions Maryam Safdar and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to gauge their popularity among the public by contesting election for a mayoral slot before entering the national level politic.
He said Nawaz Sharif fled from the country by telling a lie, and now he and his sons were not returning to the country despite the daily hearings of corruption cases being faced by her daughter Maryam Safdar.
Fawad also came hard on PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif for resorting to excuses in the court which was about to indict him in the money laundering case. Such excuses would not save Shehbaz from the accountability, he added.
There were some straight questions that needed to be answered by Shehbaz Sharif, he said, adding the PML-N president had to explain as to how Rs 4 billion had poured into the account of Maqsood, who was a peon at his mill and drawing a meager amount of salary.
Likewise, an amount of Rs 2.5 billion was found in the account of Masroor Ahsan, who drew Rs 20,000 monthly salary from Shehbaz’s mill, he added.
He said there was another character in Shehbaz’s money laundering case whose name was Manzoor and became billionaire after getting a job in the mills of Sharif family.
“Whosoever gets the job in the mills of Sharif family ultimately became a billionaire. This is the cruelty they caused to the nation, and it is only Prime Minister Imran Khan and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf which drew attention towards this injustice.”
If they wanted to do politics in Pakistan, he said, the first condition for them was to return the looted money.
The minister slammed the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) for doing injustice with the people of Punjab, who, in many areas, were still deprived of the natural gas. Nawaz Sharif in fact compromised on the rights of people of Punjab to become prime minister for the third time.
Referring to the Weighted Average Cost of Gas (WACOG)-Bill passed by the Senate the other day, he said the legislation would help ensure provision of gas supply across the country.
Fawad also extended the heartiest congratulation to PM Imran Khan and Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar for bringing a ‘big change’ in the country’s energy policy.
He lashed out at the previous government of PML-N for ruining the industrial and agricultural sectors of Punjab. They deprived a big chunk of Punjab’s citizenry of motorway facility by excluding its major cities, including Gujranwala, Wazirabad, Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin, Jhelum, Dina, Sohawa and Gujjar Khan from those projects.
Highlighting the present government initiatives, he said Prime Minister Imran Khan was ensuring a motorway linking Sialkot with Rawalpindi, which would benefit the people of all those above mentioned cities.
He said a promise for building a canal in Jhelum was made in 1906, but no past government had made any effort in that regard. Prime Minister Imran Khan was the only leader who had fulfilled the promises made in 1906.
After a hiatus of 50 years, he said, a dual carriageway was being constructed to connect the motorway with the Grand Trunk Road. When the PTI was contesting the previous election in Jhelum, there was no clean drinking water facility in the area, but now multiple projects had been started by the prime minister to ensure better health of the people.
He extended gratitude to the prime minister for giving multiple mega projects to the people of Jhelum.
The minister said the participation of people in public gatherings would send a strong message to the opposition that the prime minister enjoyed full trust of the nation. A large number of people had gathered in Mandi Bahauddin today to welcome and hear the prime minister.
He said after a long break, the industry and agriculture had been revived due to the prudent policies of the prime minister. It was the first time in the country that a leader was taking care of the poor and passing on relief to the downtrodden segments of the society by launching social welfare initiatives like Ehsaas and Health Card.
He also called out the opposition for unjustified criticism on the increase of petroleum products’ prices in the country. The opposition parties did not have any alternate solution other than criticism.
About inflation, he said had the Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari not borrowed Rs 23 trillion, the present government would have subsidized all the commodities. This year alone, the government had returned the loans of $12 billion.
He lambasted the leaders of both the PMLN and the PPP for looting the national wealth ruthlessly.
He said the people would take revenge from them again by electing Imran Khan as their prime minister in the next general elections for another term of five years.
Fawad said the green passport was bringing honour to the people of country due to effective foreign policy initiatives taken by the prime minister.
When PM Imran Khan represented the country at the United Nations and China, it increased the respect of Pakistanis around the world.
He also mentioned the planned visit of PM Imran to Russia in coming days as another achievement on the foreign policy front.
