ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Q MNA Chaudhry Moonis Elahi on Monday asked Prime Minister Imran Khan to reassure his party members not to panic [ghabrana nae hay] as the PMLQ would stand with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf [through thick and thin].
He said they should not get panicked by the PMLQ’s meetings with the opposition leaders, adding that Pakistan Muslim League-Q respected its alliance with the ruling party. Addressing a ceremony here, Moonis clarified his party's position following a meeting of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) President Shehbaz Sharif with the Chaudhry brothers ‘to inquire about the health of Chaudhry Shujaat’. "The relationship with Imran Khan has been made to carry forward,” Moonis added.
The PMLQ leader said “we are political people and welcoming everyone who comes to our place is our tradition”. He said that political people establish relations and then carry forward them. "It is not our norm to turn down our guests,” said Moonis.
Prime Minister Imran Khan, who later addressed the meeting, agreed with Moonis Elahi. He said the PTI members had become “battle-hardened” over the past 25 years of their struggle and there was nothing to panic for them. He said the ruling PTI had “complete faith” in the Chaudhry family-led PML-Q and claimed the “panicked” opposition had now realised about former premier Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s health.
“I think Mr Chaudhry [Shujaat] is a politician who has such political skills that nobody has and people who are suddenly thinking about his health are those who are panicked,” PM Imran said while addressing the International Symposium on Pakistan’s Hydropower Development in Global Perspective in the federal capital.
The premier’s jibe was apparently aimed at the opposition leaders, who over the last week met with the PMLQ leaders in an effort to secure a no-confidence move against PM in parliament.
Amid the current political atmosphere, he added, the panicked politicians were meeting with the families of their party workers after 20 years of their death and offering condolences.
Separately, addressing a meeting of the PTI Central Executive Committee on Monday, Prime Minister Imran Khan said that all parties in the ruling coalition were standing with the PTI and they were going nowhere. He said they would counter the narrative of the opposition through performance.
Expressing anger at a campaign comprising personal attacks on the social media, the prime minister said that ‘unbridled’ freedom would be dangerous. He said that personal attacks campaign on the social media was vicious and unbearable. “We will have to discourage such trends in society,” he added.
He directed the party leaders to discuss the successes of dams, health cards, Ehsaas and Kamyab Jawans. “The party leaders should highlight the welfare projects launched by the PTI government at the public level,” he added.
During the meeting, the committee also discussed the local body elections and political strategy. In his speech, the prime minister also stressed the need to establish dams, saying negligence on this issue since 1960 had “cost the country a lot” in terms of high electricity price and inflation.
“We wouldn’t have been facing such inflation if we had run hydroelectric projects,” he said, adding that every commodity became expensive when electricity was expensive.
He went on to say that lack of long term planning led to further problems in the country, stressing the need for water storage. “Fastest growing country in the world, China, thinks about long-term planning, which is the reason of their success. They think about the future,” he said, “Not like us, who think about five years as if a project will be completed in five years then they will make it.” He hailed his government for planning ahead than thinking about elections.
PM Imran called for providing water access to provinces in order to tap their agriculture potential in view of the rising population. He said resources were depleting due to fast increasing population. “This decade of dams would double water storage capacity,” he said, adding that the clean electricity via water would also lower the impact of climate change. The premier also called for building tunnel technology that could also help in generating tourism.
On the Kalabagh Dam project, he alleged that anti-national forces were misguiding the people in Sindh by telling them that their “water will be stolen”.
“So we have to run a complete campaign to tell them scientifically that they will have no harm when the Kalabagh dam will be built, and it will also benefit them,” he said, “But if we will start this before this [decades of dam project] the people, who want to spread chaos will use this. This is my point because we are a federation we should try to take all provinces together.”
Later, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib took to Twitter and said Mooni's statement about the recent political meetings had increased the "nervousness" of the opposition parties, especially Shehbaz Sharif.
