LAHORE: Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif has said that pushing the PML-N against the wall will not help serve the people.

“Pushing the PML-N against the wall will not be a service to the nation. Political victimisation of the opposition will neither help solve the national crises created by the PTI government nor will it serve the nation,” the PML-N president told a presser here on Monday.

“Several party leaders and I were sent to jail for our ‘crime’ of ending loadshedding, providing cheap transport, health cards, educational scholarships and free medicines to the public and launching other public-welfare projects,” he deplored.

Shehbaz’s focus was on the achievements of his party’s previous government, especially overcoming power and gas loadshedding, and the PTI dispensation’s alleged mismanagement and corruption on those fronts.

Holds Imran responsible for return of loadshedding

The opposition leader parried questions regarding his allegation that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) investigators “misbehaved” with him during interrogation in the sugar scam case, and the fate of his proposal for a grand dialogue among the institutions.

He maintained that he wanted to confine his presser to the government’s failures on every front, especially loadshedding and corruption that had made the lives of the general public miserable during the last three years.

Targeting Prime Minister Imran Khan and his government for bringing back loadshedding of electricity and gas, Mr Shehbaz blamed “poor governance and corruption” of the incumbent rulers for the menace.

“Imran Khan is responsible for bringing back loadshedding. His government obliged gas and oil mafias that led to the return of the nightmare of electricity and gas loadshedding, which was successfully overcome through the hard work of the PML-N government,” he said and credited former premier Nawaz Sharif for ending 20-hour power cuts.

“Loadshedding is a product of the mismanagement, incompetence and corruption of the PTI government,” he declared.

Mr Shehbaz alleged that PM Khan’s government had signed “expensive” gas agreements, while the PML-N regime established economical power projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in Hub, Sahiwal and Port Qasim.

“We saved billions of rupees in power projects and completed them in record time. We produced Rs20 per unit electricity through furnace oil,” the former Punjab chief minister boasted, adding the PML-N government had initiated the Trimmu Head power project which was to be completed by 2019, but the PTI gave it to its “blue-eyed” firm and it could not be completed.

“Trimmu was supposed to generate 1,263 megawatts of electricity, and its delay has caused a cost overrun and loss of Rs35 billion,” he lamented, adding gas was available on cheap rates in the early days of Covid-19, but the Imran government did not purchase it to generate power because it wanted to benefit “its friends”.

Shehbaz said the country was “mercilessly looted in the three-year rule of the PTI with the worst corruption and incompetence in the history of the country… while the pitiful propaganda of corruption made against the PML-N has died its own death”.

He also blamed the Musharraf regime for setting up expensive power projects.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2021