KP development now top priority: Imran

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Sunday pledged to make the PTI-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa a new province, shifting his entire energies to making it a model for the rest of the country.
Imran slammed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government for the petrol crisis and said he had shut down the entire country by causing the petrol shortage.Speaking at the party’s sit-in convention here to pay tribute to the party leaders and workers, he said they would now focus on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to make it different from the other provinces in terms of governance and upholding merit.
Imran’s spouse Reham Khan was not seen at the event. Appreciation certificates were also not distributed among the workers as per the plan.Amid chants of ‘go Nawaz go’, Imran appeared convinced to first deliver in the province and said they would not put the masses — already facing electricity, gas and now a petrol crisis due to the PML-N government’s incompetence, lack of merit and nepotism — in further trouble.
He expressed solidarity with the parents of the martyred students of the Army Public School, Peshawar, and urged the provincial government to do whatever it could to lessen their grief.“We don’t want to further divide the nation and put it in more trouble, so that the government can win the war against terrorism,” Imran maintained.
However, he repeated what he claimed to have been saying for the last 10 years that for the resolution of the issue, the people of tribal areas would have to be consulted and used in dealing with the situation there.
The PTI chairman promised to bring a new manifesto (law) for the tribal areas so as to do away with the British-era laws and enable them to make their own institutions, including local bodies.
At one point, Imran said a change had taken place even at his home, indirectly referring to his recent (second) marriage with media person Reham Khan.He conceded they just could not deem it proper to continue their protest after the Peshawar school carnage, but cautioned this should not be construed as if they had stepped back from their demand for a probe into the 2013 polls through a judicial commission.
“I have a question to ask from the workers and party leaders, be ready when I give you a call to bring the entire Pakistan to a grinding halt if the government does not do justice with regard to a fair poll probe,” Imran said.The participants responded enthusiastically by saying ‘yes’.
About how the PTI-led government was performing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he claimed that unlike the Punjab, the police had been depoliticised in the province and not a single politically-motivated case had been registered so far.
Imran said Nawaz Sharif’s biggest injustice was that he had politicised not only the police but also the bureaucracy and had done favours for the DMG (PML-N), a separate group within the bureaucracy. He charged the state institutions had been kept deprived of heads on merit, which was badly affecting their performance.
He vowed that one billion trees would be planted across the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in five years and cleanliness campaigns would be launched in all the cities and potable water supply would be ensured.
Imran claimed that the working of government hospitals had already been improved drastically, as they had planned giving autonomy to the provincial institutions to enable them to uphold the merit and good governance.
Imran said the provincial government would be focusing on reforms in education, health and police department. “Government schools will be brought on a par with the private institutions,” he said.
Imran pledged that former law minister Rana Sanaullah would be behind the bars this year for his role in the Faisalabad violence against his party workers and killing one of them, namely Haq Nawaz.
He said the PML-N activists, who were involved in firing on PTI workers in Jhelum, would also not go scot-free. He blamed Rana Sanaullah for the Model Town massacre also. The PTI chief promised to ensure quality treatment of PTI youth Nauman, who was shot on his back during the party’s public meeting not long ago. He is unable to stand up on his own feet yet.
Imran said they would hold intra-party elections after having learnt a lot from their previous experience.PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi said from the day one they doubted the government’s intentions with regard to the formation of a judicial commission and they had similar apprehensions even today.
He made it clear that the objective of their ongoing struggle was not to grab power but to make a new Pakistan. PTI MNA Asad Umar came down hard on the government’s policies and ridiculed it saying, “What type of lion is this that has drunk the entire petrol.” He charged a prime minister having a fake mandate could not resolve the national issues and hence was a threat to Pakistan.AML President Sh. Rasheed Ahmad held Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi responsible for the petrol crisis and called for his removal from the cabinet.