Propaganda cannot mask poor governance, says Shahbaz

LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shahbaz Sharif has criticised the government and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), saying no amount of “propaganda can cover for “poor governance and incompetence”, prompting the PM’s anti-graft tsar, Shahzad Akbar, to call for his being placed on the no-fly list.

In a combative series of tweet on Wednesday, Sharif said: “Feel sorry for NAB/Niazi for always running away from court of law and deploying poor old tactics of propaganda on media to save their own gross incompetence & corrupt practices in sugar/wheat/medicines/Peshawar BRT. No propaganda can cover up your poor governance & incompetence!”

In a second tweet, he alleged: “IK (Imran Khan) accused me of offering him a bribe Rs.10 billion to be silent in Panama case/Javed Sadiq as frontman. Then it was said I siphoned off money from Multan Metro, a baseless charge rejected by Chinese govt. Even to this day, he has not presented a single piece of evidence in court!” Reacting to Sharif’s allegations in a news conference, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Accountability, Shahzad Akbar, made a series of counter-allegations against the former Punjab chief minister.

Akbar claimed the assets of the Sharif family had significantly increased in the 10 years the PML-N was in power in Punjab. He also alleged that Shahbaz had established “dozens of paper front companies on employees’ names for money laundering” and documentary evidence of all these “unlawful transactions” had been collected. “It will not be easy for him to escape the law,” Akbar said.

Akbar claimed that from 2008 to 2018, a “mind-blowing increase in assets of Shahbaz Sharif and his sons was detected”.

He also alleged that the source of their income was “telegraphic transfers sent to them by poor employees of their companies”.

“The money was sent abroad through Hundi and then sent back via TTs,” the PM’s aide claimed. He also made a raft of other claims, specifying names, numbers and methods which he alleged the former Punjab minister and his sons employed to launder their money.

Akbar then challenged Sharif to drag him to courts in London if these allegations were baseless. He also asked him to give answers to these questions in the courts and media.

Replying to reporters’ questions, Akbar said that the arrest of any accused was NAB’s purview. He demanded that Shahbaz Sharif be put on the exit control list (ECL) as there was a chance that with “hot winds blowing here, he might go to England to celebrate Eidul Azha there”.

Attempting to dispel the impression that only opposition party leaders were victimised, Akbar said for the first time in the history of accountability that the government was doing “self-accountability” and the inquiry on sugar and wheat shortage a manifestation of this.

He insisted the PTI was fighting against an “obsolete system, not against Sharifs and Zardaris, who were its beneficiaries”.