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Thursday, April 25, 2013
‘Shahbaz should come up with facts to refute PPP’s achievements’LAHORE: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Punjab President Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo has lambasted Shahbaz Sharif for criticising the figures provided in the PPP advertisement wherein he had recounted the farmers’ friendly agricultural policy of his government that turned Pakistan from a wheat-importing to a wheat-exporting country.
Talking to reporters, Wattoo said that Shahbaz Sharif was criticising the PPP and its leadership for the sake of criticism, mainly because he “lacks arguments to build a case against the PPP government’s past five years, especially on the agriculture front”.
He said instead of coming up with facts and figures to counter the claims of the PPP on the agriculture front, especially pertaining to the betterment of the farming community, Shahbaz Sharif was using foul language against the PPP leadership.
He reminded Shahbaz that the agricultural policies of the PPP government had enabled farmers to earn an additional income of approximately Rs 900 billion during the last two years alone, which was unprecedented.
The PPP Punjab president said that when his party took power in 2008, Pakistan was importing staple food, but with the government’s prudent policies concerning more than 70 percent of the national population inhabiting the rural areas and engaged in agriculture, the sector had undergone a healthy revolution that changed the lives of even those ordinary farmers who owned less than five acres of land.
He said the credit goes to the PPP government that announced raise in wheat support price, resulting in more and more land coming under wheat crop cultivation. Subsequently, he said, Pakistan had been turned from a wheat-importing country to a wheat-exporting country.
Wattoo also criticised Shahbaz for using foul language against President Asif Ali Zardari during his Malikwal rally the other day, and asked him to first clarify his own position before the people for setting new records of loot and plunder during his five-year rule in Punjab. He said that having realised that his PML won’t be able to form the future government in Punjab because of the abhorrence the masses had developed for the Sharifs, Shahbaz had stooped too low and started using foul language against the president of the country, which was simply deplorable.
He said Shahbaz Sharif’s politics was based on deceit and lies, which the Sharifs had been telling ever since they left Pakistan for Saudi Arabia in December 2000 after signing a pardon deal with Pervez Musharraf.
Wattoo said the Sharif brothers kept lying with the nation for 10 years about their self-exile deal with Musharraf, before it finally transpired that they had voluntarily left Pakistan in the wake of a presidential pardon.
Wattoo said that the Sharif brothers were masters in the art of committing corruption and plundering national wealth. The PPP leader said that Punjab had virtually been converted in to a rogue province during the last five years of Shahbaz Sharif as the chief minister.
“Shahbaz Sharif has plundered national wealth, which was actually the taxpayers’ money, to the tune of billions of rupees, be it the Sasti Roti scheme involving Rs 7 billion, metro bus project involving over Rs 75 billion, Danish Schools System involving over Rs 20 billion or the Yellow Cab scheme involving Rs 14 billion,” the PPP leader said.
Wattoo said that Shahbaz Sharif’s five-year rule in Punjab proved beyond any iota of doubt that poor governance and mal-administration was his trademark in each and every field.
“Since Shahbaz has great hunger for cheap publicity, he had declared himself the Khadam-e-Aala of Punjab, although he eventually ended up in being tagged by the masses as a failed chief executive who simply failed to deliver anything positive for them.”
The PPP leader said that Shahbaz Sharif not only failed to meet the challenges of governance and administration but it also remained a harsh reality that most of the institutions in Punjab had deteriorated during his five-year rule due to his directionless policies.
Wattoo said that Shahbaz needed to get some urgent teaching lessons so that he could act as a decent and mature politician, “who thinks twice before opening his mouth to speak”. pr
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk