After no-trust motion, Imran to be held answerable for inciting violence: Shehbaz Sharif

ISLAMABAD: Opposition leader in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday demanded foolproof security and administrative measures by all security and constitutional institutions for peaceful and smooth voting process for the no-confidence resolution in the National Assembly on Sunday (today).

“It is a duty of all constitutional institutions to take all measures within ambit of the law and Constitution which can ensure entry of members in the House; they can poll their vote and their vote is counted in the light of orders of the Supreme Court of Pakistan,” he said while addressing a press conference here. 

He said Imran Khan Niazi, instead of accepting his defeat, was bent upon dividing the nation, to sabotage voting on the no-confidence resolution against him. “Politics of Imran Khan to divide the nation will be buried tomorrow and he will have to bite the dust,” he said.

hehbaz said that Imran Niazi was refusing to follow the path of Constitution. “Imran Khan will have to be answerable for confronting the Constitution once he suffers defeat in the National Assembly tomorrow,” the opposition leader said. He said Pakistan could move towards self-reliance and self-sufficiency only by breaking the begging bowl, regretting that his statement was twisted and was linked to the United States.

“I said the same but some friends tried to give the statement a twist, which is not correct,” Shehbaz while said while clarifying his statement of ‘beggars cannot be choosers’. He recalled that it was not the Government of the Punjab and not Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which refused to take the US aid as a protest against drone attacks on Pakistan soil. “If a country is not economically independent, then its political economy is meaningless,” he added.

Shehbaz said that whether it is Islamabad administration, chief commissioner or the IG Police Islamabad, they should ensure maintenance of law and order in the federal capital on Sunday.

The Islamabad administration has imposed Section 144 in Red Zone, prohibiting all kinds of gatherings and protest on Constitution Avenue, Ataturk Avenue, Jinnah Avenue, Khyaban-e-Suharwardy and surrounding areas. The administration banned pillion-riding and also wrote a letter to Metro Bus Authority to suspend the bus service on April 3.

“Imran has started damaging Pakistan-China ties by criticising the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Pervez Khattak started it, followed by Imran Khan and Asad Umer, who went overboard with false propaganda against CPEC. They said the loans were taken from China at 8 per cent whereas not a single one was over 2.25 per cent while majority was not even loans and were investments by Chinese businessmen.

Asad Umer later had to eat his words in the UK media. On top of this, the PTI government accused China of corruption in CPEC alleged that they had paid $17 million in kickbacks to the CM Punjab.

“This madness by the PTI reached such levels that I had to tell Imran Khan and the PTI to either put up or shut up. That was when they backed off. Imran not only damaged diplomatic ties between Pakistan and China but also hurt the sentiments of Chinese people for Pakistanis with his baseless allegations,” he said.

Shehbaz said Imran did not stop there; he went for another most treasured and trusted friend of Pakistan and his foreign minister lashed out at Saudi Arabia, which created bad blood between the two historic friendly countries. And now he had gone straight for Washington.