Bilawal must show numbers before no-trust against PM: Ahsan Iqbal

LAHORE/ISLAMABAD: The selected government of Imran Khan has tarnished the image of the country before the international community.

This was stated by Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) General Secretary Ahsan Iqbal while addressing a press conference here on Saturday. He said all the projects started by the PML-N had been stopped and approved funds of the projects had been withheld.

“Today someone is impounding a plane; someone is closing a bank account; Imran Khan has destroyed the honour of Pakistan in two-and-a-half years,” he added. “The only thing stuck in Imran Khan’s mind is that he will not give an NRO [deal],” he said, adding that Panama-I and Panama-II were both frauds.

Answering a question that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto has asked for a no-confidence move, Ahsan replied that Bilawal Bhutto must show his numbers in the parliament before submitting the no-confidence motion.

He said that everyday some incident of the government came before the nation. “We left the volume of Pakistan's economy at $315 billion while Imran Khan reduced it to $205 billion. Afghanistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka have overtaken us in the economy,” Ahsan claimed.

The countries that were developing have not been harmed by coronavirus because their economies were strengthened by the policies of their governments, he said and maintained that Pakistan’s economy must go one or two per cent forward from India.

“Today people have forgotten the claims of 10 million jobs and are trying to save their present jobs,” Ahsan said. “Imran government has introduced a new style in which they tell people to thank that they are getting bread, thanks to the government which increased the price of petrol by only Rs3, thanks that India has taken occupied Kashmir while Azad Kashmir is with us, thanks God that they are still alive,” he said.

Ahsan Iqbal said the incompetent rulers were trying to please the nation by showing their failures as their achievements. “Our fight is not against Imran Khan, it has entered a decisive phase. How much recovery is made during the accountability done during the regimes of Ayub, Zia and Musharraf,” he asked.

He said a civil martial law was in place in the country for the last two-and-a-half years, adding that the incumbent government should be sent packing now. “We can't allow ruining of Pakistan anymore. Forty billion dollars of investment came from China in our times,” he said and added that the ML-1 financial agreement was not signed yet.

Ahsan said Pakistan's development budget had been reduced from Rs1,000 billion to Rs600 billion, out of which only 25 per cent had been used. He said the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government had announced that they could not pay salaries to the employees of their Higher Education employees. “We have given laptops to the youth so that they can get modern education. This facility has also been taken back from them,” he added.