LAHORE: The Panamagate case will be decided by Wednesday, hopefully, but the prime minister’s family will not accept the Supreme Court’s verdict, leaders of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf said at a press conference here on Saturday.

Naeemul Haq, the party’s central information secretary, addressed the press conference and was joined by Mian Aslam Iqbal and Chaudhary Ijaz. They appeared confident that the prime minister would be disqualified by the Supreme Court.

The PTI will accept whatever decision the Supreme Court passes in this case, they said. Mr Haq said the prime minister’s family had been fooling the nation for several months but the truth would soon be revealed and PM Nawaz Sharif disqualified.

He said the government had withheld the Model Town massacre’s report and while a case of breach of national security was referred to a commission, Maryam Nawaz did not record her statement. This has been happening in order to protect certain people but it cannot go on forever, he said. The PTI leaders criticised the government’s progress on the economic front and claimed that failure was evident. They claimed that the government had borrowed Rs7 trillion in the last four years in addition to printing currency notes worth Rs100 billion daily. They said the farming sector was on a brink of disaster and the unemployment rate close to 70 per cent. And yet, the rulers continued to make claims of making progress and bringing about prosperity, they said.The PTI has started preparing for the next general elections, they announced.

It would bring about a dynamic manifesto and contest elections on the basis of it and defeat the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. The PTI was the biggest political force in the country and coming elections would prove it, they said.The leaders said that opposition members had moved a reference against Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on solid grounds but the speaker of the Punjab Assembly had rejected it on political grounds.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2017