ISLAMABAD: Dismissing the opposition’s call for a million march to the federal capital, Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Monday he was confident the people would not come out on the streets to defend some “corrupt” families.Talking to the media at the PM Office here, Khan said: “There has had not ever been even a single public movement in the world, which was driven only to protect the corruption of a family”. The Prime Minister, who seemed amused to hear a question about the million people march by the opposition, said: “We held protest for four and a half months but it was issues-oriented, while the opposition wants to cover up its money laundering cases and some people want to hide under the garb of medical treatment.” The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) launched its movement against the electoral rigging and later went in for protest on the Panama Papers issue, he added.To a question about the ongoing cases in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), he said his government had nothing to do with initiating the cases of money laundering against the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leadership, adding former Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar wanted to probe fake bank accounts in the wake of arrest of model Ayan Ali, who was allegedly trying to smuggle foreign currency abroad.He said he wanted the NAB to target the top men involved in corruption rather than singling out the corrupt at the lowest tier. “You can only eradicate corruption when you get to the men at the top,” he said and added the Supreme Court too raised the same issue with the NAB. When asked whether former premier Nawaz Sharif would be allowed medical treatment abroad, Khan asked: “Under which law can he be allowed to proceed abroad?” He said thousands of prisoners were already in various jails and there had to be justice.The Prime Minister said he always believed in the rule of law and quoted a Hadith of Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), stressing that the powerful in a society cannot be given preference over the less fortunate.“The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government remained in power in Punjab for around 30 years, and they could not build even a single medical treatment facility to cater to the illness of their political elite,” Khan said. “I would not like to be blackmailed that there is no medical doctor, or hospital in Pakistan that cannot provide the requisite treatment,” he said and added the best possible facilities were already being extended (to Sharif).Khan further said his government would be launching the country’s largest comprehensive poverty alleviation programme on march 27. He said with the input from China, he was looking forward to undertaking measures to fight the rampant poverty.Regarding the role of opposition in the parliament, the Prime Minister regretted that they were not taking democracy seriously. “They wanted to have a NAB accused as head of the Public Accounts Committee and use the parliament to cover up their misdeeds,” he said, adding: “The people pay for holding of parliament session and each minute costs the nation around 80 to 90 thousand rupees.”News Desk adds: Prime Minister Khan also said the country will not need to import oil after reserves were found near the Karachi sea, Geo News reported. “We are hopeful of finding large reserves of gas and oil in the sea near Karachi. The nation should pray for this and I will soon share good news regarding this,” he said. “God willing the reserves will be so large that we will not need to import any oil,” he shared.
03-26-2019, 09:03 AM
PM Imran dismisses opposition?s march
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