ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan said that the traders who observed a strike in various parts of the country on Saturday were only protecting the interests of those who were opposed to economic reforms.

Addressing a press conference, she said the real representatives of traders did not need to observe strikes as the doors of the Federal Bureau of Revenue and other government departments, including the ministry of industries, were always open for them.

“However, different priorities will be set for those who are stubborn and acting on somebody’s behalf,” she added “The government will not be blackmailed by anyone.”

Dr Awan said: “We need to understand that if the status quo is challenged and a move is made towards tax reforms the beneficiaries try to create hurdles.”

She described the striking traders as a bunch of supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) who were trying to protect the interests of the Sicilian mafia.

The special assistant said the country’s economy could not survive on loans and aids. There was a need for increasing the tax base, she added.

“We have been told that the huge Anarkali market of Lahore has 20,000 shops, but only 600 shopkeepers file tax returns, and it is another debate to see how many of them have shown profits and who are in losses,” she said.

Dr Awan said that the buyers were paying taxes on all the goods they purchased, “but the traders are not depositing the money in the national kitty. The nation needs to stand with us over the issue of tax reforms”.

She criticised Nawaz Sharif and described him as the king who resorted to emotional rhetoric at his party’s workers convention, but failed to submit proof of his income to courts.

She called Shahid Khaqan Abbasi a puppet prime minister chosen by the ‘king’ for a brief period, but he made records by denting the national kitty.

She said Mr Abbasi made nine official visits abroad for 24 days along with 109 people and the expenditure was $111.74 million, while in 2018 he made 10 international visits along with 105 people, costing $146.80m to the nation, but these tours were only to protect the interests of his party leader ‘and nothing else’.

She said Mr Abbasi spent Rs8.99m on meals, Rs75.17m on stay in hotels and Rs41.89m on ground handling, while Rs16.52m was miscellaneous expenditures.

She said a voice was heard in English from Sukkur at midnight, but the people of rural Sindh were not awake at that time. “The speech was only for the foreign patrons telling them that rigging was about to happen in the by-election of Ghotki,” the special assistant said, calling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari a ‘novice politician’.

She accused the PPP candidate in the Ghotki by-poll of enjoying official support at the behest of the Sindh chief minister. “But despite all this, you are claiming that your mandate is being snatched away, but the fact is that people of Sindh are set to reject you.”

She said that the federal government had moved the Election Commission of Pakistan regarding this pre-poll rigging.

Meanwhile, PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz tweeted: “Pakistan has literally come to a grinding halt today,” referring to the countrywide strike observed by the traders.

Published in Dawn, July 14th, 2019