LAHORE: Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) Emir Senator Sirajul Haq said on Monday that even the ministers belonging to the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) do not call their party’s performance satisfactory in its first 100 days and those who voted the party into power are getting increasingly disillusioned.

Talking to Dawn over the completion of PTI’s self-set deadline of three months to meet some of its goals, the JI chief said that since the PTI was not an ideological party and only a conglomerate of power-seeking individuals, it was never expected to work like a cohesive team and deliver on its promises.

He claimed that all federal ministers were now saying that “it was too early to judge their performance, conveniently forgetting that the deadline was set by them, not their critics. Since the PTI was a collection of individuals, free from any ideological and developmental agenda, it could neither bring up any legislation in parliament nor propose a way forward”.

“The PTI has been the only ruling party that continuously needled the opposition to take to the streets instead of seeking cooperation on a national agenda. It is the opposition that has been asking the government to perform instead of fighting, and offering cooperation for development. To me, this has been the biggest failure,” Mr Haq said.

PTI can’t defend itself over 100-day performance: PPP

Commenting on the stance adopted by Maulana Fazlur Rehman a day earlier in his speech at Sukkur, the JI chief said he only read the speech in papers and found nothing harsh; he spoke about undue interference from some institutions in the democratic process and economic decision making. The JI also thinks along the same lines.

“Apart from the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal president, Fazlur Rehman is also head of his own party and can have opinion on certain issues. The JI and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl are parties with individual identities and have their own opinions, which overlap as far as MMA decision-making is concerned,” he maintained.

PPP: The PPP laments that the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has started deriding the past governments whenever it is asked to explain its own 100-day performance.

“The PTI shattered hopes of the masses on each day of its first 100 days in power and whenever one asks it to explain its performance during this period the party begins deriding the working of the past governments,” PPP Punjab chapter president Qamar Zaman Kaira said here on Monday.

He was reacting to Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry’s claim that they had taken 34 important measures during the 100 days.

Mr Kaira said the masses were disturbed as everything has become dearer, from petroleum products to electricity. He said the PTI remained silent on the disclosure of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s sister Aleema Khan’s property in Dubai and legalisation of the same by paying fine to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

He said the ruling party couldn’t get even a single enactment passed from the National Assembly whereas PM Imran Khan undertook six foreign visits during this time, leaving the country entangled in a grave situation.

PPP Information Secretary Hassan Murtaza said the PTI couldn’t cover up its own inability by blaming the past government for every ill. He could not found any precedent in the past when a government had done so much ‘damage’ to the country as by the PTI’s.

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2018