Deal with IMF: PM should step down, apologise to nation, says Bilawal

ISLAMABAD: Chairman Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Thursday asked Prime Minister Imran Khan to step down and to apologise to the nation for the PTIMF deal, which had ruined the economy.

“It is not enough for the ‘selected’ Prime Minister Imran Khan to admit his mistake in the IMF deal. He should have listened to us before entering into the deal instead of now reviewing it,” he said in a statement.

Bilawal said the buck stopped with Imran Khan and that he could not stave off criticism and save himself by scapegoating others.

Bilawal said Imran’s admission that the IMF deal was wrong was actually acceptance of his incompetence. “First, he claimed that he would rather consider suicide than sign a deal with the IMF. Then after delaying until terms got harsher, he defended and signed onto the conditions that have crippled Pakistan, and now he is making another U-turn on the policies he championed about a month ago. Imran Khan makes mistakes, acknowledges those mistakes and then goes out and repeats the same mistake all over again. This is a country, not an elementary school,” he added.

Bilawal announced that his party will thwart the government’s plan to bleed the people with new taxes of up to Rs1,200 billion at the behest of the IMF.

He said the federal government had overseen crippling price hikes of electricity, gas, and petrol at the behest of the IMF.

“Imran Khan claims to be free of influence in his decisions, but in reality the economic fate of the people of Pakistan has been abdicated to a few salaried employees of the IMF,” he said, adding that crushing the people under the burden of excess taxation at the whims of the IMF was dereliction of duty, and a dishonor to the integrity of the country.

He further said Imran Khan’s decision to devalue the rupee on the IMF’s dictation had been catastrophic for the nation, the consequences of which were being borne by the people today.

“If Imran Khan had taken Parliament into confidence before the deal, the people would not have been drowning in the tsunami of inflation today,” he added.

He blamed record unemployment figures in the country on the asinine economic policies of the illegitimate and incompetent PTI regime.

He pointed out bitter irony in the fact that a party that had promised to create 10 million jobs had instead made millions of Pakistanis unemployed.