ISLAMABAD: Reacting sharply to the latest speech of Prime Minister Imran Khan, the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Saturday declared that they could not be “bullied into silence by fascist threats” and would continue to highlight what they called the government’s failures.

In a statement, PML-N spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb said a meeting of the leaders of all the opposition parties had been called on Feb 18 in Islamabad to deliberate on the “fascist and dictatorial actions of the incapable, incompetent, liar and selected PTI government”.

She alleged that the government was intentionally running carefully crafted propaganda machine to make the Public Accounts Committee controversial so that the massive theft by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leaders and the losses by their incompetence would remain hidden from people.

Joint opposition meeting convened on 18th

“Let the prime minister beware, the opposition will neither take dictation from him nor will it be intimidated by his bullying. The autocratic-minded prime minister believes that the parliament is answerable to him. Imran Khan needs to read the constitution to understand that the prime minister is answerable to the parliament which represents the people of Pakistan,” she said while responding to Mr Khan’s onslaught on the PML-N in his speech at a ceremony in Balloki (Nankana Sahib).

Ms Aurangzeb said the PTI was the first political party in the history of the country which attacked the parliament from outside and now it was attacking the parliament from inside.

Responding to the prime minister’s statement regarding the opposition striving for a deal, she said Imran Khan should know that a “selected prime minister does not have any authority to commit or grant a deal”. Moreover, she alleged that the mother of all the deals had already been granted by the PM to his sister Aleema Khanum, who is allegedly ‘Benamidar’ of Mr Khan’s illegal wealth and assets.

She said if the prime minister believed that his bullying tactics would silence the opposition, he was severely mistaken. The opposition, she said, would continue to ask for the money trail for the billions worth of illegal offshore assets of Aleema Khanum.

She asked Imran Khan to stop his “hypocritical rant” of accountability because he was demolishing people’s livelihood in the name of an anti-encroachment drive while he used his position to legalise his own encroached Banigala property. She asked Mr Khan to step down and face the inquiry in the helicopter case, before asking others to do the same.

She said that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif should be admitted to a hospital with cardiac facilities as soon as possible in the light of recommendations of the medical board. “God forbid, if anything happens to Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan will be responsible for it,” she warned.

In her separate statement, PPP’s information secretary Nafisa Shah said the current government could not mislead the nation by telling tall tales. She said whosoever had attempted to tarnish Asif Zardari’s reputation had always faced embarrassment and defeat. She said no case had been proved against Mr Zardari in the courts of London and Switzerland “whereas PM-select Imran Khan has inherited the art of corruption from his father who was dismissed from government employment on corruption charges”.

Ms Shah said the PM, along with his sisters, had been accused of mismanagement of charity funds. She said the government was a constant reminder of the eras of dictators Ziaul Haq and Pervez Musharraf. She alleged that the nation had been betrayed by the PM as he was busy distributing millions of rupees among his corporate friends while the country was crippling under the financial crisis.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2019