LAHORE: Federal Railways Minister Khwaja Saad Rafiq says people should be allowed to make their own decisions as the “closed-door decisions” would take the country nowhere.

“Pakistan is not a complete independent country and we want a completely independent country as otherwise it won’t function,” Mr Rafiq said clarifying that his words must not be taken as an attack [on any institution].

He was speaking at “re-opening” of construction work on the monument of Bab-e-Pakistan on Walton Road here on Sunday.

Also present there, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif threatened to expose the “real face” of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

Shahbaz says will expose ‘real face’ of NAB

Reiterating PML-N stance that Nawaz Sharif was not given fair treatment, Saad said they would “continue speaking the truth even if they were ousted from the political arena. I know that speaking one’s mind has its own cost in this country. We are not fighting against anyone but want respect of our mandate.”

Without naming names, he warned those running state institutions that their `mutual conflicts’ could be damaging for the country and appealed to “political and apolitical people” to go through statements of the US president.

“We cannot fight against each other…we’ll have to sit together for deciding some national agenda instead of thinking of any adventure.”

The minister said they were receiving notices from such institutions whose own [internal] affairs were not better. The remark was in an apparent reference to the NAB notices to him in the Paragon Housing Scheme scam.

Talking about the current political situation, Mr Rafiq said the PML-N had been attacked in every possible way. “There had been conspiracies against our government during the last four and half years. Sit-ins were staged. Our faiths were attacked with false allegations…There’s no weapon that has not been tried against the PML-N.”

The minister said people had expressed their love for the PML-N at public rallies because they could not be fooled. “This is the reason why Nawaz Sharif sitting in Jati Umra is more dangerous than in the Prime Minister’s House.”

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif came hard on political rivals for what he said staging a “drama” on The Mall and also threatened to expose the “real face” of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) today (Monday).

“A drama was staged on Mall Road, where political jokers from across the country gathered,” Shahbaz said in reference to the Jan 17 rally convened by the opposition parties, including PPP, PTI, PAT and AML, with the apparent agenda of winning justice for the June 2014 Model Town police raid victims.

He said he was glad that the Lahorities ignored the protest meeting by not participating in the “comedy show” and urged them not to vote for those in the 2018 elections who used to block roads and prevented people from earning their livelihood.

Referring to the NAB notice to him in the Ashyana Housing Scheme probe, the chief minister said he would expose the real face of the NAB on Monday, the day he was supposed to appear before the accountability agency.

He lamented that the NAB was issuing notices to his late father but never summoned [PPP co-chairperson] Asif Zardari, whose millions of dollars were once stashed in Swiss banks.

“We will bring back the money looted by Zardari,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2018