Daily Times

QUETTA: Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) Chief Mahmood Khan Achakzai on Thursday said that no one would be allowed to roll back the democratic set-up. Addressing a press conference, Achakzai said that the PkMAP alliance with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz was for democracy. Mahmood Khan Achakzai expressed his support for the government. “Our party’s alliance with Nawaz Sharif is for the sake of democracy and PkMAP will not let anyone derail democracy. No leader is more popular in the country than Nawaz today. We will always uphold democratic values,” he said. He said that his party fully supported PM Nawaz due to their commitment towards democracy, adding that he would never support anti-state forces. “We are and will always be against martial law. Corruption is the country’s most dangerous disease,” he said. Speaking about the current political scenario, Achakzai pointed out that targeting someone on the basis of corruption was a political move. Terming corruption as the biggest issue facing the country, he said one person alone should not be targeted under the garb of accountability. Achakzai added it was a good omen that the JIT wanted to eradicate corruption from the country. “However, corruption has not yet been defined,” he said.

He said in the prevailing situation, no one was more popular than Nawaz Sharif. He said that an all parties conference (APC) should be held to discuss the issue of corruption. He added that in the past, sit-ins were staged in Islamabad without any justification. “The participations of the sit-in barged into the Parliament House and set up tent houses there,” he said. He said that the country could not afford any mistakes at this critical juncture. “No country or system can run on basis of injustice. A joint session of the Parliament should be convened for ending corruption. We should wait till the final decision of the Supreme Court in the Panama case,” he said. Achakzai said that a mega corruption scandal had surfaced in Quetta in the past. “However, only Mushtaq Raisani and Khalid Langu were punished,” he said.

Published in Daily Times, July 14^th , 2017.