SANGHAR: Former president and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) lacks the ability to run the government and state, but knows how to accumulate personal wealth.

Addressing lawmakers and activists of the PPP in Khipro on Thursday, he said he was waiting for the findings of a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) constituted by the Supreme Court to probe allegations of money laundering by the prime minister’s family and praying for the government to complete its tenure.

Instead of blaming the JIT, the PML-N should bring in a new prime minister, he suggested. “If you don’t want to face cases and are even reluctant to change the prime minister, then why are you in politics?” he asked. “One has to face all odds in politics”.

Mr Zardari said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif complained that conspiracies were being hatched against his government, but he forgot that when the PPP sided with it the PML-N government responded by victimising the PPP leaders and activists through the National Accountability Bureau.

He said the PPP activists had been brave and accustomed themselves to hardship, adding that even the Zia regime could not defeat their spirits. He said the PML-N had no popular vote which [Zulfikar Ali] Bhutto had enjoyed, but he was forcibly removed on July 5, 1977.

Mr Zardari said the PML-N government did not understand what the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor meant for Pakistan; they thought that just getting loans for power plants was what had been promised by the CPEC. He said that given the alarming conditions in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan he had apprehensions about the current rulers in Pakistan who did not know how to run the country’s foreign affairs.

Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Shah alleged that the rulers had accumulated personal wealth and raised electricity tariff, though oil prices had come down. The government had ignored the agriculture sector and failed to adequately raise salary of government employees, he added.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2017