ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Information, Broadcasting, National History and Literary Heritage Marriyum Aurangzeb talking to the media outside the Supreme Court after the announcement of the verdict on the petition seeking disqualification of Imran Khan and Jahangir Tareen said that there could not be two different scales in law and the decision of SC represented a negation of the standard and principle set in the Panama case. She said that the verdict was a corroboration of the narrative that Nawaz Sharif expounded on GT Road after his disqualification and was not surprising for the PML-N. She said that the double standard was resorted to because they had to disqualify an elected Prime Minister who even today was more popular at the grassroots level than in 2013, while on the other hand was a person who had been abusing the ECP, court and the constitution and even today was hurling invectives at NAB. The minister said that it had always been the PML-N stance that political leader should come and go through votes. She said that on the one hand an elected Prime Minister was disqualified on the basis of ‘Iqama’ for not receiving the salary and on the other hand a person was told that if he had an offshore company, which was not declared, it did not matter much. Marriyum said that in this case a thief and dacoit had been sacrificed to save the King. She said today it had been established that Jahangir Tareen was a thief and a plunderer and after his disqualification the ATM that funded the sit-in had been closed. The minister observed that Imran Khan was running the party with foreign funding from foreigners which he used for financing the sit-ins and was trying to obstruct development on their dictates. She said that the verdict on that had yet to come and the matter had been referred to the ECP for investigation and giving a verdict on it. She said that the decision by ECP in that case would disqualify entire PTI. The minister said that they had accepted the SC verdict and the appearance of the former Prime Minister in the NAB court twice a day was a sequel to that. Published in Daily Times, December 16th 2017.