LAHORE: Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid avoided addressing various questions on the present political scenario in his press conference on Saturday.
He, however, defended former military dictator Pervez Musharraf and hinted at more arrests from the PPP and the PML-N and also advised PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari to either do a plea bargain with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) or face ouster from politics like Maryam Nawaz has seen.
A reporter asked him to comment on Gen Musharraf’s comment in a footage doing the rounds online nowadays that the Constitution is a worthless piece of paper, he defended Gen Musharraf for not holding any stain of corruption on his career.
“The Constitution is respectable but there are many countries where it is not available in a written form,” he said.
“The main thing is he (Musharraf) has not committed corruption of even a single penny.” The former minister of the Musharraf government said Gen Musharraf was neither a traitor nor corrupt.
“He served the nation for 40 years. But the way he is being humiliated in the verdict is really condemnable. Paragraph No 66 is judicial martial law, unconstitutional, unlawful, un-Islamic and unethical,” he added.
He said all politicians, including Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, were groomed in the nursery of the General Headquarters (GHQ). He chose to remain mum when asked Prime Minister Imran Khan’s relation with the GHQ nursery.
“Right from Bhutto, all politicians used Gate 4 (of the GHQ) to enter politics and went out from Gate No 8. They all are the production of GHQ Gate 4. They all are from nurseries of martial laws,” he smiled.
“When Imran started politics, the army was not the same. And there was no Gate No 4 since it was shut after a terrorist attack,” he tried to diminish the impression that Mr Khan too is from the GHQ nursery.
When asked if Mr Bhutto-Zardari would appear before the accountability court or not, he said that at 23, Bilawal was the CEO of the ZGPL (a company owned by Asif Zardari). In 2016, he signed the documents related to fake transaction of Rs1.5 billion. So he would either have to do a plea bargain with NAB, failing which he would be disqualified like Ms Nawaz,
He said the situation would turn bad to worse for PML-N leaders in future as cases against Shahbaz Sharif and Hamza were very serious.
“I can see that more PML-N leaders would be encircled.”
Responding to Bilawal’s tweet “Democracy is the best revenge”, the minister called democracy the most corrupt system.
When asked if the 2014 PTI sit-in was an attempt to pressurise the then government to give extension to the then chief of army staff, Mr Rashid responded: “I am holding the press conference on a serious issue. I also say that it is the army that saved the Constitution and democratic government three times.”
About his department, he said the Railways was set to launch four shuttle and three freight trains.
“Two shuttle trains each would be launched in Lahore and Karachi divisions of the PR. They include Lahore-Gujranwala and Lahore-Raiwind. Similarly, two more will be launched between Karachi and Hyderabad,” he said.
Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2019