Interests of opposition and the country on opposite path: PM Imran Khan

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday said that the interests of the opposition parties and the country were on opposite paths after the former shot down two 'critical' bills in Senate related to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

The bills were a part of the FATF obligations that are to be fulfilled by Pakistan in order to exit the “grey list” it is currently on.

“Today in Senate the opposition defeated two critical FATF-related bills: Anti Money Laundering and ICT Waqf bills,” PM Imran said in the first post of a thread of Twitter messages.

”From day one I have maintained that the self-serving interests of the opposition leaders and the country's interests are divergent,” he said.

The premier said that as the accountability noose continued to tighten, the Opposition leaders attempted to "save their corrupt money by trying to prevent parliament from functioning”.

The premier said that in a bid to make the Parliament non-functional, the opposition sought to ”undermine government’s effective coronavirus strategy and now [it is] trying to sabotage [Pakistan’s] efforts to exit the FATF grey list".

The premier said that the opposition ”tries to hide behind [the] facade of democracy to protect their loot and plunder”.

”To blackmail for NRO by defanging NAB, they would even have [Pakistan] put on FATF blacklist to destroy [the] nation's economy and increase poverty. They keep threatening to bring down government unless given NRO,” he said.

The premier then went on to unequivocally declare that there will no more concessions for corrupt politicians.

He said that his government would not give an NRO as ”it would be a betrayal of [the] nation's trust in holding plunderers of public wealth accountable."

”Musharraf gave NROs to the 2 political leaders which quadrupled our debt and destroyed the economy, ” he said.

”There will be no more NROs,” he reiterated.