Daily Times

PESHAWAR: Taking a jibe at the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief, the Advisor to the Prime Minister, Engr Ameer Muqam said that Imran Khan had termed the National Assembly fake, and constantly boycotted the joint parliament sessions. Therefore, he asked that the PTI parliamentarians should tender resignations, and get a second public mandate by holding fresh elections.

“People gave 34 seats to the PTI but Imran insulted the people’s mandate, but it was not attending parliament joint sessions. What the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had done wrong by sending the PTI into the parliament,” he asked during a news conference at the press club hereon Wednesday.

Ameer Muqam said that the parliament was not for the Prime Minister or Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, but was representing more than 20million people of the country. He said the PTI had gained 90 per cent mandate from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and sent its parliamentarians to the National Assembly. But, he criticised that it had miserably failed to live up to their expectations.

Criticizing the PTI announcement to again boycott the parliament joint session on the eve of Turkish President, Recep Tayyib Erdogan, he said that it was totally out of context as to what kind of message was being sen by Imran Khan by not attending the parliament.

“We warmly welcomed the Turkish president in the country. But, what had the PTI gained from boycotting the parliament several occasions, he asked. One hand the PTI parliamentarians didn’t attend parliament sessions, while on the other they were getting regular salaries, perks and other privileges, the PML-N leader said. He said if the PTI parliamentarians want to continuously insult the public mandate, then they should tender their resignations, and give a chance to the people to send their true representatives to the parliament by holding fresh polls, he remarked.

Ameer Muqam also lashed out at the PTI chief for his habit of criticising everything done by the ruling party. “Imran’s sit-in got the visit of the Chinese President cancelled in2014, but Nawaz Sharif didn’t accept his party’s resignations to keep them in the Assembly,” Muqam said, referring to the eight-month absence of the PTI from the legislatures during that year. He said Imran Khan had wasted two and a half years of the Pakistani nation over politics of accusations and sit-ins. He accused thePakistanTehreek-e-Insaf chairman of shutting down cities for his politics while the prime minister was trying to make the country prosperous.

The PML-N leader said Imran Khan was working on an anti-state agenda He called that it was not PTI, but the “Tehreek-e-Inteshaar” (the party of instability). He said those people criticising the leadership of the country from the rooftops of containers, were against the development and progress of the country.

Listing his government’s achievements, he said that s number of development projects haf been initiated, particularly those relating to hydel power generation and construction of new dams, to overcome with the growing energy crisis by the end of 2018. He mentioned that work on the Dasu dam was swiftly in progress, which would generate 4,000 megawatts electricity, while construction work on the ‘Diamer-e-Basha’ dam had intensified. When asked about the PML-N’s absence from the JI-convened APC on the CPEC, he replied that his party was not invited to attend this event. However, he said that the federal government had already initiated work on the western route of the CPEC. He termed that the CPEC was a game-changer, which would bring economic prosperity in country.