PML-N, PPP urged to come clean on funding as PDM’s ECP protest looms

Ag Agencies

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government on Sunday sought to defend itself amid intensifying criticism from the opposition over alleged sources of the party’s political funding, as the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) gears up for its protest outside the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to demand a decision on the foreign funding case tomorrow.

In a press conference here on Sunday, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Shibli Faraz, flanked by Railways Parliamentary Secretary Farrukh Habib asked opposition parties to submit records of their foreign funding to the ECP “instead of pressurising and intimidating state institutions”, state media reported.

Faraz said the PTI had submitted record of donations it received from workers and sympathisers abroad to the ECP’s scrutiny committee. Pointing to a stack of documents, Faraz said a record of “40,000 notarised and authenticated transactions undertaken through proper banking channels has been submitted to the ECP”.

The minister said: “The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) are reluctant to submit record of donations worth billions of rupees to ECP’s scrutiny committee.” He said opposition parties, under the platform of PDM, “have united to cover up their corruption” and said the people of Pakistan “have rejected the opposition’s narrative”. “Now these parties are coming to stage a protest outside the ECP just to intimidate and pressurise institutions,” he said, urging the PDM to submit records of their foreign funding “instead of misleading the people through demonstrations”.

When he spoke, Farrukh Habib said the ECP had issued three different orders asking the PML-N, the PPP, and the JUI-F to submit records of their funding, but to no avail. He claimed the PML-N has disclosed a media expenditure of “700 million rupees and they have to tell the ECP, on which media house, they have spent this huge amount”.

He also claimed six million dollars were paid from the national exchequer to a US lobbyist by the PPP government in the past. He said the PML-N is registered in the United States and the United Kingdom and asked “when it will give its record of its fundraising in these countries”.

The ruling party’s press conference came after PML-N Spokeswoman Marriyum Aurangzeb, in a press conference said: “The people of Pakistan, under the leadership of PDM, are now going to the ECP to demand a written decision from the Election Commission.”

She also said the day will come when the public will go for a long march and demand a resignation from the “selected group”. In a talk with supporters later, video clips of which were shared by the PML-N’s official Twitter account, Aurangzeb drew the difference between and “Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan and Imran Sahib’s Pakistan”. “When votes are stolen, jokers like this are foisted upon the country,” she said.

Meanwhile, Islamabad police chalked out a security plan for the PDM, which involves over 1,800 personnel, which will be led by five police superintendents and 10 deputy superintendents under overall supervision of Islamabad’s senior superintendent of police operations, “to ensure the implementation of code of conduct agreed between the organisers and the district administration”, state media reported.