Daily Times

Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has refuted the Pakistan People’s Party’s claim that the party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was offered chairmanship of Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which he had ‘turned down’.

In a statement issued here on Friday, the minister said that Bilawal’s name, among some other candidates for the post, had surfaced during informal deliberations. “We don’t have any objection on anyone, including Bilawal becoming the PAC chairman,” he was quoted as saying. However, it is the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) prerogative to audit projects initiated during the PML-N tenure, said Chaudhry, adding that the opposition can appoint its own chairman to audit projects launched by the current government later on.

Earlier in the day, PPP leader Faisal Karim Kundi had claimed that the party chairman had turned down the offer made by one of the federal minsters during the session of the National Assembly on Thursday.

Kundi said the party had set a precedent of appointing the opposition leader as the PAC chairman and would not break its own tradition. The former NA deputy speaker said Bilawal had also turned down an offer of making anyone the PAC chairman other than PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif.

Last month, Prime Minister Imran Khan had vowed not to let former Punjab chief minister become the chairman of the Public Account Committee at any cost. “We will not be blackmailed by the opposition,” the premier said while addressing a meeting of the PTI parliamentary board.

Published in Daily Times, November  10^th 2018.