Our Correspondent Jhelum
The government will not be consulting Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif over the appointment of the National Accountability Bureau’s next chairman, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry said Saturday.
The information minister, speaking to media in Jhelum, said consulting Shahbaz over the matter is akin to asking a suspect who their interrogating officer should be.
“Shahbaz Sharif has been declared a suspect by NAB […] and we will hold no consultations with him over the appointment of the NAB chairman,” Chaudhry said.
Slamming PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif, the information minister said when Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav was arrested, the former prime minister avoided commenting on the matter.
He remarked that Nawaz was living a life similar to that of ousted Afghan president Ashraf Ghani — with one in London and the other in Dubai. “Nawaz Sharif and Ashraf Ghani fled abroad with dollars,” he said.
The information minister expressed the confidence that PTI would form a majority government in the 2023 elections, and that the polls would prove to be PPP and PML-N’s “last” elections.
“We will form a 2/3 majority government in the Centre […] we had to form a coalition government this time, and we had to make compromises due to that,” Chaudhry said.
The information minister predicted the PML-N and PPP would fall apart during the next general elec-tions, claiming that no politician is ready to take both the parties’ tickets.
“Bilawal offered Rs50 million to each person in South Punjab who would contest elections from PPP’s ticket […] PPP does not have candidates to field in Punjab,” he said.
The information minister claimed that a weekly toss is held between Maryam Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif to decide who will lead the PML-N.