Allowing Imran to complete 5-year term was political decision: Shahid

ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister and senior PML-N leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has maintained that the only way out of problems currently being faced by the country lies in holding fresh general elections.

"The country can move forward once the people are allowed to participate in the first fair and free elections," Shahid Khaqan while speaking at Geo Television's programme 'Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Key Sath' said.

He pointed out that allowing Imran Khan's government to complete five years tenure could have been the best option for the PML-N but they could not allow the rulers to take the country towards complete disaster.

"Our political strategy will be in favour of the masses and we cannot act as silent to plight of the people," he said. He said that stakeholders will have to decide before the elections that how the issues of the country run in the future. Responding to a question, the former premier said the last PML-N government reached the best LNG deal, saying that India is purchasing LNG with three times higher rate from Qatar. "Two of the sitting cabinet members also benefited from the LNG deal but they do not have the moral courage to tell that the deal reached by the PML-N government was the best deal," he said.

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that currently Pakistan was producing natural gas at the rate of Rs6 whereas the LNG was available for Rs3. "The incumbent should purchase LNG and store the same for terminals established by us," he said, adding the government should stop producing natural gas in the country. Abbasi said he wanted the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to complete his trial but applied for bail when it was insisted by the party Quaid Muhammad Nawaz Sharif. "Nawaz Sharif asked me that I should apply for bail which is my legal right," he said, adding that his case would be a landmark case.

He pointed that he extended every cooperation to the NAB and responded to every allegations, provided them details of my income and expenses, utility bills etc. and details of bank accounts. He said he was arrested on production of a copy of warrant and he remained on 70 days remand but they asked the same old questions from him and they did not have any evidence or documents against him. "I ask them that I take responsibility of decisions taken by the ministry when he was minister and the cabinet when he was the prime minister," he said.

He said he was kept in death cell during remand period which reflects prime minister and his government's narrow minded approach. "How a prime minister or government can deliver for the people if continue to check as what a person being kept in jail is eating or doing," he regretted.

Abbasi said that NAB has become a department for political engineering which had totally destroyed economy and ended governance in the country. He said officers who worked with him were asked to give statements against him and save their skins while a BPS-17 officer of NAB call federal secretaries threatening them to become approvers or should be ready to be arrested. He said since the government has been doing his media trial, the hearing of his case in NAB should be telecast live so that the people would know as what is right and what is wrong.