Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Saturday claimed that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has reneged or conveniently U-turned on its promises, whether they are economic pledges, political positions and governance reforms, or foreign policy commitments, which is hardly surprising.
While responding to the PTI government's 100 days plan and 100 days in power, the PPP said, "We consider that their 100-day plan was nothing but an electoral gimmick and that is what it has become, as 100 days are over but little of their agenda stands implemented. Hundred days later, this 100-day plan has become an object of mockery and joke making, as few in the country are taking it seriously, while PTI is trapped in its own statements and words and has announced to launch yet another progress report which PPP considers nothing but a 'cover-up' of the 100 days of U-turns, pure lies, and deception."
The PPP further said, "We feel the country is being run by a 'selected' Prime Minister and his 'selected' cabinet which is making the poor people of this country go through political somersaults."
The PPP said the PTI promised that it would reform the government by vigorously pursuing accountability, by putting in place an effective local government system, depoliticising police, rationalising access to justice and initiating civil service reforms. The PPP claimed that except empty rhetoric on accountability and a task force on civil service reform, there was business as usual on governance characterised by favouritism, political pressure on police, and the usual transfer posting job. There were many U-turns here, the most glaring of them concerned the Prime Minister and his cabinet's performance in the 'selected accountability' and the non-performance in the National Assembly and the Senate, it said.
The PPP said there were two particular U-turns it would like to point out. The first is that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission was closed down arbitrarily after wasting the nation's resources of about Rs 1 billion. "In our view it is a U-turn so that it allows them to evade oversight in the province under their own watch," said the PPP. Secondly, out of the 800 plus Pakistani property owners in Dubai, announced by PTI's Asset Recovery Unit, Aleema Khan's name is known to all who is the sister of PM Imran Khan. But she has apparently been allowed to get away from investigation by paying penalty to the FBR showing that PTI campaign against corruption does not involve its own people or the First Family. "We consider this a plea bargain without accountability allowed to the Prime Minister's sister creating an exception in the law," added the PPP.
The PPP said the Prime Minister promised to give weekly answers in the Parliament in Prime Minister's Question Time. However, not only has he not responded to questions, he has hardly made any appearances in the Parliament. In addition, by denying the opposition leader the right to take the charge of the Public Accounts Committee as has been the tradition, the government is only showing its insecurity and short-sightedness.
The PPP said the PTI government brought down hundreds of buildings in Islamabad Capital Territory and Punjab, yet when it came to Bani Gala, there was an offer for regularisation of the property. This is not one but two Pakistanis, contradicting their promise of equality where one Pakistan is there to protect properties of the rich and the powerful including Imran Khan, and the other Pakistan of the poor, weak and helpless whose properties are bulldozed, the PPP said.
The PPP claimed that the PTI government vowed to bring about changes and reforms in the local government system based on their model in KP. So far, there is no roadmap on this promise, except one meeting by the Prime Minister where he tasked the Punjab government to come up with new local government model, it said.
The PPP said that one of the longstanding commitments of the PTI was to reform the police system by instituting independent policing making it free from political influence. Instead, one of the first scandals to hit the "Tabdeeli government" came with the First Lady's ex-husband Khawar Maneka ordering a transfer of a district police officer (DPO), of Pakpattan for not apologising to him. The PPP said that this was followed by transfer of the Inspector General, Punjab, and later Inspector General, Islamabad.
The PPP said that for years, PTI criticised 'lavish' protocol by various governments in power and promised that they would follow simplicity when in office. But once in power apart from a few antics, the people witnessed the same traffic blocks, long queues of cars, and long waits on roads of PTI government, it said.
The PPP said the PTI government said that Imran Khan would only use commercial flights and no special planes would be used for foreign visits. "However, his visits to Saudi Arabia and Malaysia have been on special planes but so far the government has not yet given us the details of the costs incurred on these trips," the PPP said.
The PPP said the government promised a South Punjab Taskforce, and did manage to create a two-member task force comprising the cabinet members from South Punjab, viz, Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Khusro Bakhtiar, but to PPP's knowledge no meeting of this two-member force ever took place. Later on, the Chief Minister constituted a so-called Council on South Punjab, where there was no representation of the opposition. The PPP said the government promised a transformative Karachi package but the commitment to Karachi can be seen from the fact that it took three weeks for the Prime Minister to visit Karachi. It said that subsequently there has been much lip-service on the issue of Karachi but a concrete package has not been seen. On the contrary, the projects started by PPP Government in Sindh, most importantly the K4 project is suffering because the federal commitments are not forthcoming, the PPP said.
In its 100-day plan, the PPP said the government promised to launch a mega development plan in FATA and begin the process of extending all laws to FATA. However there is so far only lip-service on both these counts, it said.
The PPP said that slogan of "unveiling Pakistan's most ambitious job creation strategy to create 10 million jobs across five years" has so far been nothing but a hollow slogan. Not only that there is no strategy in sight after three months, people are being deprived of jobs by ordering bulldozing of shops and commercial projects.
The PPP said that one of the most ambitious targets was to announce a policy framework to launch five million houses. As with most other targets, the government hastily launched the Naya Pakistan Housing Programme with little thinking leading to long queues of people thronging the NADRA offices. Now the PTI is taking U-turns and rethinking policy, design and even on how to implement the plan as bottlenecks on financing and land acquisition, etc, are surfacing.
The PPP said that far from revitalising the economy, the first decision of the government was to escalate the gas tariff which was increased by nearly 143 percent. This was followed by increase in CNG to Rs 100 per kg from Rs 84 a kg. The PPP said that as a result of raising of gas, electricity and CNG prices, inflation rose and is presently the highest in five years.
The PPP said that during election speeches, Imran Khan vowed that he would commit suicide but would not go to IMF for more loans. The PPP said that after nearly one-and-a-half-month of uncertainty and flip-flops, the government announced that it would be going to the IMF to resolve the balance of payments crisis and the current account deficit.
The PPP said the uncertainty and indecisiveness of the government did allow a number of vested interests to make money as the rupee dipped overnight and lost more than 10 percent of its value increasing the import bill and debt manifold.
The PPP said the adviser for commerce said that CPEC projects will be halted but then there was a U-turn. Soon enough, the government retracted and said they are committed to CPEC. "We are still not sure which of the two is the PTI government's policy. The visit to China only brought more MoUs making it unclear as to what government's commitment towards CPEC really is," said the PPP.
The PPP said Imran Khan and his team quoted a figure of $ 200 billion stashed in Swiss banks by Pakistani clients. The PPP said they promised that they would recover this amount at one stroke and all the fiscal problems of the country would wither away. Even after coming to power, they continued to use this number but had neither any idea on the sources, nor the institutions that could trace this amount. The PPP said PTI promised to launch an agriculture emergency and promised to optimise subsidy programmes, but there was little mention of agriculture or farmers. The PPP said PTI took a U-turn on foreign visits and the Prime Minister went on a 'Begging Bowl Mission' to Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Malaysia and China, and except for Saudi Arabia, no gains were achieved in resolving the balance of payments crisis.
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