'Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz will contest the by-election in NA-39 and NA-229 on the basis of his performance and will win the election with a big margin.
This was stated by leaders of Pakistan Muslim League at a press conference here at PML House on Sunday. Secretary General, PML and Senator Mushahid Hussain Bayed, PML Information Secretary, Senator Tariq Azeem, Senator Mohammad Ali Durrani, Mohammad Amin, MNA, and Ghulam Sarwar Khan, MNA, said that voters in these two constituencies "are conscious" of the economic achievements of Shaukat Aziz; "therefore, they will vote for him".
Mushahid said that Shaukat "has a good track record" as Finance Minister and during his tenure Pakistan achieved a tremendous record in foreign exchange reserves.
He said that Pakistan has achieved economic stability and recovered from the economic crisis due to the liberal economic policies of Shaukat Aziz as Finance Minister. He said that due to the achievements of Shaukat, Pakistan "is now relying" on its resources and has stopped taking loans.
He said that the opposition "has no issue to raise" against Shaukat Aziz in this bye-election; therefore, it is now highlighting non-issues only to keep themselves alive in the campaign.
He said that PML is contesting the by-election on performance and through positive campaign purely on the basis of track record of achievements.
Referring to the demand of resignation of Shaukat before contesting election, Mushahid said that contesting election as minister was not illegal as in the developed countries, including USA, the sitting presidents carry out election campaign without resigning from their posts.
He said that Shaukat, being an elected senator, knows the problems of the masses and has been taking measures to resolve them and people are fully aware of such steps; "therefore, they will vote for him".
Mohammad Ali Durrani said that people in both these constituencies are with Shaukat and ready to give him their votes for a record victory in these bye-elections.
Referring to the allegation of development projects, he said, the work on development projects is underway throughout the country.
Amin and Ghulam Sarwar, MNAs from Attock, said that it would be an honour of the voters of Attock that Shaukat Aziz has decided to contest the election from their area.
They said people of the area are waiting anxiously to cast their vote in favour of Shaukat Aziz so that he could become Prime Minister.
About releasing development funds to Nazim in Attock, they said these funds were part of routine in the start of the new financial year as it has happened in all other areas, so it is nothing new in Attock.
They claimed that Shaukat would get more votes as secured by the PML candidate in the previous elections while the votes of PPPP candidate will reduced by 50 percent.
Tariq Azeem contradicted the news item of arrest of any lawyers in these constituencies and said that such news items were baseless.