Miftah blames Dar for orchestrating his removal

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) leader Miftah Ismail has claimed that his successor Ishaq Dar ran campaigns against him for more than six months as he could not tolerate someone else from the party as the finance minister. 

In a podcast on a YouTube channel on Wednesday, the former finance minister said that Dar went on TV and claimed that he would bring the dollar rate to Rs160. He also claimed that the finance minister asked anchors to tweet against him and host TV programmes.

The PMLN leader said Dar is closer to Nawaz Sharif because his son is married to Nawaz’s daughter and was with him in London. He added that Dar used to tell the PMLN supremo that he would bring the dollar rate and petroleum prices down.

Miftah added that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was satisfied with his performance and did not want to replace him. He said that during his tenure, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) deal was restored, while default risk was also minimised.

The former finance minister added that even though it was the PM’s prerogative to remove him, the way it was done was not respectful. Nawaz Sharif called him to London and told him that he was being replaced in front of 12 people, Miftah said.

On a question regarding Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan, Miftah said that there is no doubt that Imran is a good politician and no one is close to him when it comes to political strategy and narrative building.

However, he added that Imran lacks policy-making skills, adding that Imran wants to be the PM badly but does not know what to do after becoming the PM.

This is not the first time the two PMLN leaders have openly confronted each other. Dar and Miftah have been in a verbal war since Miftah took over as the finance minister in April.

Earlier in October, Miftah took a jab at Dar for slashing the petrol price by Rs12.63 per litre. In a tweet, the former finance minister had expressed his displeasure over the government’s decision not to increase the Petroleum Development Levy (PDL) without IMF approval and termed it “reckless”.

In response to the tweet, Dar said in the Geo News programme “Capital Talk” that Miftah should not worry about the IMF deal as now he (Dar) had to deal with the lender.