During visit to Saudi Arabia, Imran’s delegations were bigger in size than Shehbaz’s

ISLAMABAD: While the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf is very critical about the size of the prime ministerial entourage to Saudi Arabia, the record of the former prime minister's trips showed that he took along a record number of people during his visit to the Kingdom. In one trip, as many as 44 people accompanied him.

As Shehbaz Sharif flies this week to Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah and hold meetings with the Saudi leadership, the former information minister Fawad Chaudhry alleged that he would go on a chartered plane of PIA in order to carry along journalists. Shireen Mazari tweeted that the children and servants of the Sharif family would also accompany him.

However, an official privy to details said eight coalition leaders would join PM Shehbaz Sharif in this trip. If his military secretary, chief security officer and personal staff officer are also counted in, the delegation will comprise 12 individuals. If a comparison is drawn with Imran Khan, his maiden visit to Saudi Arabia had 18 delegates, according to the information obtained through the Right of Access to Information Act 2017 by a citizen, Syed Raza Ali Shah.

According to that information, Imran Khan visited 15 countries as prime minister between September 2018 and November 2021. His visits to Saudi Arabia were the highest in number and the biggest delegation accompanying him was also during one of the such visits there, according to the details shared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The PM undertook 31 visits from September 2019 to October 2021 which cost the public exchequer more than Rs200 million. The highest number of visits took place in 2019 and the lowest in 2020. After Saudi Arabia, the two most visited places were China and the United Arab Emirates. He visited both countries thrice each.

As far as visits to Saudi Arabia are concerned, he went there twice in 2018, four-time in 2019 and again twice in 2021. During his last visit he made to Jeddah, as many as 44 persons accompanied him, which was the biggest-ever delegation. Their names have not been shared by the ministry. The PM’s second last visit to Saudi Arabia constituted the second biggest delegation of 39 persons.

He went thrice to China; two of them were four days each and one was of three days. His first visit to China was in November 2019, less than three months after assuming office and a couple of visits were made in 2019. The PM paid three visits to the UAE; all of them were of less than a day and undertaken in 2019. In contrast, he had only one visit to Saudi Arabia of that duration in which 10 persons accompanied him, the smallest delegation for that country.

Other three countries the PM visited for less than a day’s duration are Iran, Qatar and Bahrain. The United States of America, Malaysia, Switzerland, Iran and Qatar were distant third in terms of the number of visits. Each of them was visited twice. His visits to the USA were in connection with a meeting with President Trump and the United Nations.

He went to Malaysia for meeting the-then PM Mahatir Mohamad and Switzerland visit was for attending the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. Much like the UAE, his both visits to Qatar were of less than one day. Regarding Iran, one of the two visits was of that duration. The only one visit to Bahrain was also of that length. Other places he visited for one time are Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.