ISLAMABAD - Reacting to the demand of PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari that Prime Minister Imran Khan should sack his cabinet’s three members for their alleged association with banned outfits, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Tuesday accused him of portraying negative image of the country.
Following Tuesday’s consecutive tweets of the PPP chairman about his earlier allegations against the cabinet members, PTI Senator Faisal Javed Khan in a statement said, “Sadly Bilawal is portraying a completely false picture of our country. Completely opposite to what our brave soldiers have done for ensuring the world’s peace.”
He said that Pakistan had emerged as a peace ambassador for the entire world.
“Bilawal is trying to please anti-Pakistan and anti-peace lobbyists,” he said adding that Pakistan had lost over 70,000 lives and suffered a loss of $123 billion in a war which was not their own but did this to attain peace in the entire world.
Last week, Bilawal in a news conference had alleged that as many as three federal ministers had alleged links with the proscribed organizations, and demanded their removal for being open supporters for these groups.
On March 5, the PTI government had started a major crackdown against the banned outfits as part of its efforts to meet the requirements of global anti-money laundering watchdog – Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – to get off its grey list and ease escalation with India after the Pulwama attack.
Senator Faisal Javed Khan asked Bilawal whose narrative he was carrying.” “This is Naya Pakistan”, he marked and added that such low political stunts won’t get him anything.
He went on saying that people of Pakistan favour peace and they promoted peace. He blamed that PPP’s politics had become completely outdated as the world had changed now.
Taking a dig at PPP’s Sindh government, Senator Khan said that over 70 percent of Sindh population was living below the poverty line. He asked Bilawal what PPP had done for the people of Sindh as their party has been ruling there for the last 30 years.
He said PM Imran Khan’s mission was to get to rid of corruption and help the poor of this country while on the contrary the PPP leadership was focussing only on amassing their assets abroad.
Expressing displeasure over Bilawal’s tweet, he stated that he never expected this from a young politician like him but sadly he was following his father’s footsteps.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Asad Umar in his media interaction hererejected the allegation of Bilawal that he got support of banned outfits during his election campaign.
Responding to a question, he said that the parties which supported him during election campaigns “had themselves been victims of terrorism as well.”
“There has been a policy of making excuses for a long time,” he said.
In July last year, Umar during his election campaign had met with Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, the founder of Harkatul Mujahideen al Islami (HuM) which is a designated international terror outfit.