Interior minister Rana Sanaullah has been quoted by media as saying that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has been given the go-ahead to arrest PTI government’s finance minister Shaukat Tarin for “sabotaging” the negotiations between the incumbent government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The question is how Tarin tried to derail the programme. The truth is that Tarin had asked the then finance minister Jhagra of KPK to clearly tell the Fund that the devastating floods had woefully undermined his province’s ability to generate the budget surplus.
My question is: what crime did Tarin commit by asking his party’s (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s) finance minister to move the IMF directly, not through the federal government? In my view, Tarin was left with no other choice but to inform the IMF about the real picture of the situation following the unprecedented floods that had wreaked havoc in KPK and elsewhere. It’s a fact that the then KPK government did not take the federal government into confidence about its letter to the IMF.
The then KPK finance minister had done so because the government of Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) has been found to be extremely hostile to Imran Khan ever since it came to power in April last year. The incumbent government seems to have lost its marbles.
Arresting Tarin will be nothing but a crude attempt aimed at stepping up pressure on Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan. I’m one hundred percent sure that Imran Khan will still persevere should this clueless beleaguered government decide to arrest Tarin.
Fauzia Naqvi (Karachi)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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