LAHORE: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has rapped Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan for clamouring about change despite choosing the people as members of his ‘change team’, who are to be blamed for the destruction of the country.

“The PTI chief is talking of transforming the country but has regrettably taken along the people as leader of the change, who damaged the country as cronies of army dictator Pervez Musharraf,” PML-N media coordinator Muhammad Mehdi said in a statement here on Sunday.

He recalled that Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri was foreign minister in the Musharraf cabinet that decided to join the war on terror and let attacks of the US drones. Similarly, he said, Jehangir Tareen was industries minister during the military regime and thus responsible for the policies that hurt the industrial sector.

It’s an open secret, he said, that Imran himself was a follower of Musharraf and helped the army ruler in the presidential referendum as well as the policies adopted by the regime that led to bloodshed of innocent Muslims not only in neighbouring Afghanistan but in Pakistan too.

“Imran Khan was helping Musharraf in the US invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 and he was with the US drone policy,” he said.

He said now the politically naive cricketer was playing as the B team of Asif Zardari in an abortive bid to check the march of the PML-N to power.

Condemning the language Imran was using against PML-N leadership, Mehdi said they could pay him back in the same coin but were not doing so for fear of polluting the political atmosphere.

The PML-N leader also criticised PPP co-chairperson Asif Zardari for not arresting and producing before court of law the killers of Benazir Bhutto despite enjoying absolute power for full five years.

He lamented that the country leaped backward instead of advancing economically, socially and politically as the people faced the worst power and gas loadshedding as well as terror hits during the PPP tenure.

Referring to the advertisement the PPP was running on TV channels, he said: “Tragic songs cannot remove bitter memories of Zardari’s tenure from the minds of people as the PPP leader failed them on all fronts.”