TAXILA: Minister for Aviation Ghulam Sarwar Khan on Saturday claimed that an international conspiracy has been hatched against the PTI government in the shape of the no-confidence move to remove Prime Minister Imran Khan as he refused to safeguard their vested interests.

He was talking to journalists after the inauguration of two development projects in Union Council Wah Garden. Member National Assembly Mansoor Hayat Khan and Member Punjab Assembly Ammar Sadeeq Khan were also present.

“Prime Minister Khan openly refused to follow their demand of ‘do more’ and declined to provide shoulder in their wars, refused to provide air space as well as air bases against any other country, announced to shoot down any foreign drone utilising our air space and following European Union instructions to give vote against Russia in the Security Council. The PTI government is paying the price for not safeguarding the interests of these nations who are now hatching conspiracies to destabilise the PTI government,” he added.

“Conspiracies to destabilise the country would be thwarted in any case. All the political parties should make decisions keeping in view national interests and not personal and political interests,” he said.

Mr Khan said all political and allied parties were fully intact and would support the government on a no-trust move but the opposition was trying to create a rift among them, adding the opposition would not succeed in its negative agendas.

Replying to a query, he said the opposition’s meetings with the government’s allies was part of democracy but the government was not afraid of it.

He was of the view that the opposition was just playing the ‘no-confidence’ game to protect their vested interests and they were only wasting the government’s time to drag attention on other matters. The minister also claimed that the government will defeat opposition’s no-confidence motion against the prime minister and emerge victorious adding that on March 27, there would be a ‘tsunami’ of people in Islamabad.

He said the JUI-F was utilising its wealth for winning the no-confidence move, adding the opposition was afraid of the government and had failed to gather people in their public meetings. He said for the last few decades, PML-N and PPP had been playing the game of musical chairs in politics.

Earlier, Mr Sarwar Khan performed the groundbreaking of a girls’ high school and inaugurated a water supply system for Wah village which would be completed with an allocation of Rs20 million.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2022