Thursday, May 8, 2008, Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1, 1429    

Conspiracies against coalition to fail: Shahbaz

MS Tanvir

Islamabad—Former Punjab Chief Minister, Mian Shahbaz Sharif has said that some elements were busy in hatching conspiracies against the successful functioning of coalition government but their efforts would fail.
“We are putting the mechanisms in place to resolve the differences and our opponents would be disappointed”, the former Punjab CM told the media here on Wednesday. To a question he said, if there are some black sheep within the ranks of coalition partners, they would be exposed sooner or later
He called for an early resolution of the judicial issue so that the government could focus its attention to solve other problems inherited from the past regime. He said the nation is stuck in judiciary issue while there are many other crises to be resolved such as electricity, food shortage, inflation, and unemployment.
Shahbaz Sharif said the nation has tolerated dictatorship for eight years and the coalition partners would of course need some time to balance the things.
Asked why the action has been taken against the Bank of Punjab President, the former Punjab CM said, according to the State Bank there are defaults of billions of rupees. The State Bank used to call the Chief Executive of the Punjab Bank but he did never turn up to explain his point of view.
Shahbaz said the Bank gave loans of Rs. 9 billion to Haris steel without any guarantee. The Bank evaluated the title deeds of a property by wrongly valuing it but when the default took place no one was there to own the debt.
He said that Bank of Punjab declared profit of Rs. 4.5 billion but the SBP asked them to declare the losses as the bank suffered losses.
Shahbaz said that he inquired the Governor State Bank about the default and she replied that SBP was serving notices in this regard adding “if we would stay away from holding the accountable we would be answerable to God in the life hereafter”.