ISLAMABAD - Former Interior Minister and Chairman Institute of Research and Reforms Rehman Malik has said that nation has gone fed up with ‘New Pakistan’ and demands and prays to get back their ‘Old Pakistan’ that can enable them to refurbish the country for the coming generations.
He said that the New Pakistan had given people nothing but more price-hikes, inflation, suicides, sufferings, worst law and order situation, increase in crime rate, vulgarity, drug addictions, uncontrolled depletion of currency, wide gap between rich and poor, diplomatic isolation and so on.
“I can put a series of undesirable gifts given by the handlers of New Pakistan to the people and the slogan of New Pakistan is haunting them day and night,” he said in a statement.
Rehman Malik expressed that the ‘Old Pakistan’ had more human values and less corruption where corrupt ones were considered as the bad eggs of the society, whereas in ‘New Pakistan’, the corrupt ones manage forced respect out of their wealth and power of money.
In new Pakistan, corrupt mafias are forcing their way to the Parliament as a status symbol which helps them to protect their ill-gotten money, he said adding the new Pakistan had enhanced price of a senator to 50 crore which had seized the venues for genuine middle-class to be in the Parliament.
He said that Pakistani politics had now been reserved for mafias and electable, whereas the workers of the parties are left for political slogans. He questioned that was it democracy and will the masses respect this system where their votes are sold for self-serving purposes.
Malik expressed that Pakistan is now reserved for the corrupt and mafias who manage to get away from the clutches of law with the influence of their dirty money as the wheels of money work here.
The children of corrupt ones are self-proclaimed princes and princesses of our country who play in world casinos and flash their money more than the Arab sheikhs, he added. He expressed that the same generation will be taking over the Capital to rule the country in their own corrupt ways causing more problems for the masses, while the poor people will be suffering more.
The former interior minister said that the parliamentary system has promoted this culture and Pakistan as a state heading towards bankruptcy. He said that system could be changed only if reasonable, honest, and competent people take over the governance of this country.
Rehman Malik said that with minimum wages and salaries for an ordinary citizen it is difficult to survive in this era of drastic and rising inflation. He said that in New Pakistan, people from the middle-class are living from hand to mouth even if all the members of the family are earning, let alone one person providing for the whole family.
He said: “I just feel that my Old Pakistan was far better than this so-called New Pakistan with hollow slogans which are just regressions only as we haven’t seen things getting this worse ever before”.
The PPP leader said that parents are unable to afford education of their children as school fees and other expenses are beyond their reach. He said that increase in rate of dollar to 173.5 has left everyone shocked and agonised as the fall of rupee and high inflation are correlated.
He said that the factors making our economy even worse are the IMF program, scrutiny by FATF, Indo-Pak relations, Kashmir crisis, and inflation, etc, and now the damages caused by coronavirus have further devastated the whole scenario.
Rehman Malik said that he is not playing politics but would like to advise the government in time to revisit the economy, agriculture, and industry of the country as these are the only ways to increase growth rate.
He suggested following the Chinese model of economy with a high level of industrialisation and high-yield agriculture system under which every village and town needs to be a mini industrial and IT zone.