ISLAMABAD, Feb 10 (TNS):Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib on Thursday rejected the claims made by opposition leaders regarding some PTI parliamentarians being in contact with them.
Had the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) members of parliament (MPs) been in contact with the opposition parties then how the bill regarding the State Bank of Pakistan got passed, he said while addressing a news conference.
Farrukh questioned the absence of opposition leaders from the Senate and the National Assembly on the day when crucial legislation was carried out.
“Such claims are baseless and ridiculous,” he remarked while rubbishing the opposition leaders’ assertions of the PTI MPs being in their contact.
Farrukh said the government was ready to neutralize the opposition’s no-trust motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan. The opposition should rather keep an eye on their own MPs, who used to remain absent from the Parliament on the day when crucial legislative bills were taken up.
Whenever there was an anti-government move, he said, the opposition always claimed to be fully prepared, but ironically, rifts were developed between them (opposition) gradually.
The minister said the opposition’s move of no-trust was bound to fail due to their infighting.
He said the notion about a rift between the government and its coalition partners was totally wrong as “our allies stood by us in the past and will continue to do so in future”.
There were always challenges for a coalition government, but the PTI was taking all-out steps to remove the grievances of its allies, he added.
Farrukh also lashed at Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif and Maryam Safdar for constantly seeking adjournments from the courts in their corruption cases.
He said Maryam’s father Nawaz Sharif had bought four flats in London from the laundered money in 1990s, but denied their ownership.
Similarly, he said, Maryam herself denied ownership of those flats in a live TV interview with an assertion that she did not have any property anywhere.
Later, her brother also in a live TV talk show made a statement that Maryam Safdar was the beneficiary owner of those flats, he added.
The contrasting statements of the whole family revealed that as to how they had orchestrated different schemes to mislead the nation about their corruption, the minister asserted.
He recalled the submission of a Qatari letter and a fake trust deed in the court by the Sharif family to justify the purchase of four flats in London through legal means.
Farrukh said the Sharif family used many tactics with a hope that they might get relief in the court by corrupting the system, but it was Prime Minister Imran Khan who foiled their every attempt to escape the accountability process.
The minister said Maryam Safdar had filed an appeal in the court against her conviction in a corruption case in 2018, but kept seeking adjournments to avoid accountability.
He expressed the confidence that Maryam would not get any relief from the court until she produced solid evidence to prove her innocence.
About reconciliation of the PML-N and the Pakistan Peoples Party, he said the old time adversaries reconciled once again to prevent recovery of the looted public money.
“They know they will not get any NRO (National Reconciliation Ordinance) that is why they united once again to make all-out efforts for avoiding the action against them,” he said, vowing that the accountability process would go unhindered.
Terming the PML-N president the ‘Corruption King’, he said the special court was hearing a case filed by the Federal Investigating Agency (FIA) against Shehbaz Sharif for his involvement in money laundering and corruption.
The self-proclaimed honest person (Shehbaz Sharif), he added, was fully exposed before the nation after his billions of rupees corruption came to the fore. He opened bank accounts in the names of 14 employees of Ramazan Sugar Mill and then made transactions through them for laundering money abroad, Farrukh said.
The minister said Shehbaz should better explain his relations with both Maqsood Chaprasi and Masroor Anwar, who continued depositing money in his personal accounts for four years.
Instead of facing trials in Pakistan, he said, the Sharif family was busy in raising their assets and expanding businesses in London.
Nawaz Sharif had also sent another fake medical report to get relief from the courts, he said, adding their only objective was to save the corrupt money.
