ISLAMABAD    -   Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Au­rangzeb Wednesday said PTI Chairman Imran Khan’s ‘Jail Bharo’ campaign was only for the helpless party workers as it was, in fact, a ‘Jail se Bacho” campaign for the leadership. It was an irony that Imran Khan had obtained protective bail for himself, but at the same time he was asking the innocent PTI workers to court arrest, she said while addressing a press conference. The minister said instead of leading the court ar­rest drive, Imran Khan was ap­parently taking refuge in a bun­ker at Zaman Park in Lahore with a plaster on his leg.

Terming the ‘court arrest movement’ a conspiracy against the country, she said it should have commenced with the ar­rest of Imran Khan, who was trying to escape from account­ability through such tactics. The minister said for the last nine months, Imran Khan had been changing his stance over the dismissal of his government by negating his own statements one after the other. The incom­petent and inefficient former rulers had conspired against the country and ruined its economy since they were involved in for­eign funding and Tosha Khana theft, she added. Imran Khan, she said, ruled at the federal level for four years and in Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa for 10 years but miserably failed to deliver to the people. Marriyum Au­rangzeb said during his tenure as prime minister, Imran Khan misused the ‘state power’ to fill his pockets with illegal gains and benefits. The PTI leader­ship, she added, sent their po­litical opponents to jail and used public funds to spread baseless propaganda against their politi­cal opponents. However, despite having all the state power for four years, they could not prove even a single penny of corrup­tion against them (opponents).

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The entire Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leadership, in­cluding Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz, Shehbaz Sharif, and Hamza Shehbaz were placed in death cells to settle politi­cal scores, she said. Marriyum said: “When they could not prove any charges (against the opponents), they pushed the country towards the economic disaster, rendered youth un­employed, and did compro­mise on the Kashmir issue.”

The minister said the PTI rul­ers destroyed each and every sector of the country and today the people were suffering from its consequences. She said Im­ran Khan Niazi had started his narrative nine months ago first with a cipher conspiracy, but he recently confessed that no foreign conspiracy was hatched against his government. He had embarked on a long march from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa towards Islamabad, during which his followers attacked and injured the police personnel, she added. Imran Khan, she noted, was ful­ly aware that neither there was any global conspiracy behind his ouster from the govt nor any such move was harboured in the United States. Castigating Imran Khan, the minister said during his ever-changing narra­tive of the foreign conspiracy, he first blamed Nawaz Sharif, then Mohsin Naqvi and then General (retd) Qamar Bajwa. The PTI chief during his country-wide drive in the last nine months did play a new ‘film’ every day, and now he was confessing that there had been no external conspiracy against his govt, she added. The minister said the present government did work round-the-clock to renegoti­ate the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, which had earlier been okayed with Imran Khan’s signatures. It was Imran Khan, she added, who had handed over the country’s economy to the IMF.

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