LAHORE – Chief Minister Punjab Shehbaz Sharif apparently cautioned on Tuesday that the country would not function by singling out the Sharif family in the accountability process.
Talking to newsmen after ‘Patient Referral Ambulance Service’ ceremony he expressed that accountability should be across the board, recalling corruption scams from the past.
“The accountability should be across the board and not of just one family as mega corruption scandals in OGRA, Punjab Bank, NICL, Nandipur, and Swiss Bank accounts are being ignored,” he said.
Shehbaz said the Supreme Court orders in some of the corruption cases were also not being implemented and observed that the money stashed in Swiss accounts might have been transferred back to the country, had [a] JIT worked like this.
Detailing the extent to which the Sharif family was held accountable in his opinion, the chief minister maintained that the Sharifs were robbed of all belongings in the name of nationalisation in 1972 and then the late Benazir Bhutto ruined its businesses.
He requested the apex court to order an across-the-board accountability otherwise, he warned, “the country wouldn’t function.”
Regarding the photo leak of Hussain Nawaz that raised questions about the impartiality of Joint Investigation Team, the chief minister said Hussain had not committed corruption “of a penny”, but was still subjected to such a treatment.
Throwing his weight behind the allegations of “partiality” of the ongoing accountability process, he said the accountability could be stricter, but it must not smack of “victimisation”.
Loadshedding Crisis
The legislator termed his announcement to eradicate load shedding in six months a ‘mistake’.
“I had talked about solving the load shedding issue within six months, but it was a separate matter altogether, as it is always possible to say something by mistake,” he clarified.
When asked about the closure of recently opened Bhikkhi power plant, the chief minister took a sarcastic jibe and said it would soon become operational again as it had not been deposited with the Swiss accounts.
