ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Central Secretary Infor­m­ation Farrukh Habib has said that all claims about Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif being a good administrator have been exposed as he has plunged the country into a quagmire of crisis in only a few months of his rule.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was not ready to trust the government because of actions of the previous government.

Speaking at a press conference at Khyber Pakhtunkhwa House on Thu­rsday, Mr Habib said that a “cabal of crooks” had been imposed on the country under a conspiracy who ruined everything because betterment of the country was not the agenda of the “anti-people and anti-poor” government.

“The imported government is making tall claims of bringing about a revolution in the country and as a result of that revolution, public will be provided relief, but since coming to power, this government has increased miseries of the masses manifold. The so-called best administrator stands badly exposed as the budget had to be changed three times,” he said.

Fawad asks ECP to allot lota as symbol to ruling parties jointly contesting Punjab by-elections

Mr Habib said that Pakistan had a large population of labourers and in his first speech, Mr Sharif had promised to raise the minimum wage to Rs25,000, but he did not honour it and took a U-turn on the issue.

“The Imran Khan-led PTI government provided the biggest subsidy in the history to Utility Stores, as in one year we spent around Rs24 billion on Utility Stores to provide relief to the masses. Our government was making Pakistan a welfare state and it provided maximum relief to the poor instead of a handful of elite, which the present government is doing,” Mr Habib said.

The PTI information secretary said that the crooked ruling junta was befooling the masses by constantly lying on TV channels because they had badly entangled the matter and did not know what to do next.

He said Mr Khan had revived the crippling economy despite Covid-19 pandemic and created around 5.5 million jobs in three and a half years. “In our time, agriculture, industrial gro­w­th, remittances and tax collection reached a record level and various public welfare programmes were being run, but these cabal of crooks ruined everything within no time,” he said.

Lota as election symbol

Meanwhile, PTI’s Senior Vice President Fawad Chaudhry has asked the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to allot lota as a common electoral symbol to ruling parties, which were jointly contesting by-elections in Punjab.

In his open letter to CEC Sikandar Sultan Raja on Thursday, Mr Chaud­hry said the PTI wanted these ruling parties to be allotted the common electoral symbol of Lota to contest by-elections.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2022