KARACHI: Lashing out at the Centre for its economic policies, People’s Party (PPP) chief Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Wednesday accused the federal government of levelling “baseless claims” of money laundering and corruption against its opponents which he said possessed the potential to push the country into the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) blacklist.
“This is not tabdeeli (change) but tabahi (destruction),” Bilawal said.
In a statement, he wondered how foreigners could be persuaded to invest their capital in Pakistan when “selected” Prime Minister Imran Khan was himself projecting the country as a safe haven of corrupt elements.
“It is a matter of shame that just like Cambodia, Ghana, and Zimbabwe, Pakistan, too, could not manage to get its name removed from the FATF grey list,” he commented.
He claimed that only if the prime minister had executed the effective policy devised by PPP, Pakistan could have easily managed to get its name off the grey list.
“PPP government had won GSP+ status for the country from the European Union,” he said and regretted Pakistan risked losing that status too under the present government.
Bilawal was of the view that Imran’s “crusade” against corruption was in fact a joke with the nation so much so that now there were question marks even over the country’s future.
Declaring Prime Minister Imran a “patron of mafias”, he said his false claims of accountability now lay exposed, and people would now no more be duped by him.
“Those who used to claim that there was corruption of Rs12 billion every day in the country need to answer the question of how much “looted” money they have deposited in the coffers ever since they came to power in 2018,” Bilawal asked.
He further said that PPP had all along been demanding the implementation on the National Action Plan (NAP), but the PTI government did not pay heed to this, and now the country’s economy had been hit badly because of that.
“Mr. Imran, you cannot overcome inflation by just receiving phone calls at the Prime Minister’s House,” he taunted.
He said today if ordinary people’s basic needs were not being fulfilled, the selected prime minister was responsible for that.
