PESHAWAR: Pakistan Muslim LeagueNawaz should stop threatening and pressurising the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) and face the investigations concerning Panama Leaks, said Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Peshawar region president and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Shah Farman while addressing a press conference here on Friday.
`Every poor Pakistani wants accountability of the rulers who had been ruling for about 35 years and twice have escaped accountability. It is time to face investigation than escape it,` said Mr Farman hinting at the PML-N`s political history whose leader Nawaz Sharif spent 10 years in exile.
While Mr Farman conveniently ignored questions about whether he as party officebearer or minister was paying the charges for the press conference to the press club or during his visit to the KP House in Nathiagali, he went on demanding that PML-N should face investigation instead of pressuring the JIT.
He also denied that PTI had anything to do with leaking of photo of PM`s son facing investigation at JIT.
`Show me the proof that PTI leaked it,he asked the journalist who put the question but added that if journalists asked them even about payments of room rents at tourist resort during their visit, why did they not ask about why PM`s son came to face investigation in a government protocol.
He said that the purpose of holding the press conference at Peshawar Press Club was to express the PTI`s support for accountability in the country and it believed it should start from the top. It was important to show support for the ongoing JIT investigation because PML-N was now trying to pressurise the JIT formed on the orders of the Supreme Court to probe the Panama Leaks scandal involving Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif`s family. The PTI had launched a campaign countrywide to force Nawaz to go after the scandal surfaced, but instead the issue landed in the Supreme Court which referred it to the JIT to probe the case.
The information minister said that PTI was just expressing the public outcry for accountability. The PTI government itself formulated laws and set up commissions to provide access to information to bring in transparency in government matters and even set up an Ehtesab commission, he said.
He said that the PTI government was trying to remove all controversial aspects that would politicise the appointment and selection of the head of the KP Ehtesab Commission.Answering a question about the current situation of KPEC, he said that through amendment in law the PTI government gave the job of selection of the DG and five commissioners of the commission to judges of the Peshawar High Court.
`We gave all the powers and functions of the Search and Scrutiny Committee to the judiciary so that there is no role of the parIlamentary committee in it and the judici-ary selects and makes the DG and commissioners of the commission answerable to the judiciary,` said Mr Farman.
Asked about politicians from other parities joining PTI, he said that they would respect the party manifesto and would be respecting the system of accountability.
He said that instead of personalities the political parties should rely on the institutions it developed to hold accountability.
