ISLAMABAD: A coalition of six opposition parties launched a fierce attack on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday, accusing him of covering up “massive” corruption scandals and dismissing his claims of clean governance since April 2022 as baseless.
At a joint press conference, leaders of the Tehreek-e-Tahffuz-e-Ayin-e-Pakistan (TTAP) – including former Sindh Governor Muhammad Zubair, PTI’s Salman Akram Raja and Asad Qaiser, and Allama Nasir Abbas – rejected Sharif’s recent statements made during his China visit, calling them “blatant lies” intended for an international audience.
Speaking at the occasion, Muhammad Zubair, a former PML-N leader now aligned with TTAP, accused the government of overseeing scams worth hundreds of billions of rupees. He blamed Sharif administration for deepening economic inequality and accelerating institutional decay.
He pointed to a Rs300 billion wheat procurement fraud and a sugar price manipulation scheme of a similar scale, calling them emblematic of systemic corruption under the current leadership.
Citing reports from the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) submitted to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), he said the findings revealed entrenched cronyism involving influential political families and business elites close to the ruling administration.
He dismissed Prime Minister Sharif’s claims of clean governance as “the biggest lie,” adding that sugar price hikes benefited mill owners to the tune of Rs300 billion.
Zubair named Shehbaz Sharif’s son, business tycoon Jahangir Tareen, and the Zardari family as the principal beneficiaries, accusing the government of shielding these cronies despite widespread public denunciations.
He highlighted a decade-long pattern of flawed contracts worth Rs8.4 trillion awarded under the pretext of capacity-building, with payments required for ten years regardless of actual electricity usage. Zubair also criticized the Economic Coordination Committee’s recent approval of a petroleum shipment tunnel contract, alleging it was awarded without competitive bidding to cronies, including foreign companies.
Regarding the devastating floods, he rejected climate change as the sole cause, blaming government “incompetence” for failing to deploy $11 billion pledged by international donors at the 2022 Geneva conference.
He said the government’s inability to implement flood mitigation projects has left millions vulnerable – a shortcoming acknowledged by Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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