ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) senior vice president Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Tuesday said that President Arif Alvi should have first examined the nature of the cases and then decide whether the recent amendments made in the NAB laws are valid or not.

Talking to reporters outside Accountability Court, he said that President Alvi should have sought details of the cases filed by the NAB over the past four years and examined their nature before refusing to give his assent to the laws recently passed by the joint sitting of the parliament.

A majority of the amendments made in the National Accountability (Amendment) Bill,2022,were those which were made by the previous Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, he said, adding that when the PTI was in power, the president was used to signing every kind of law but today, he perceives every law as unlawful.

He asked Alvi to be the president of Pakistan not of the PTI.

To a question about the perception that the NAB law was amended to close the ongoing corruption cases against the incumbent rulers, he said that the cases against us will continue.

However, he also alleged that the cases were made by the NAB at the behest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan for political engineering and to exert pressure on his opponents.

No case has any substance, there is nothing in it, he said.

He reiterated that our cases may continue; the cases against the PML-N may continue. This may even be written in the law but the NAB should be abolished, he said.

Responding to a question about the load shedding, he said that load shedding had been significantly reduced and the PML-N-led coalition government aims at to further reduce it in the future.

He further said that the issue is that no LNG or coal was bought by the previous government. Nor any arrangements were made for the fuel. And their prices have significantly increased now.

The present government is managing the situation and we will manage it with minimum possible load shedding, he said.

Replying to a question regarding reports of threats to Imran Khan, he assured that the government has taken and would take strict measures for providing security to the PTI chief.

However, he also said that there had been a talk of conspiracies against Imran in the past as well and no evidence had been presented so far to prove those.

I wish that the threats Khan is talking about are similar to the ones he had alleged in the past regarding which no proof had been found, he said.

He said that Khan during his government had withdrawn the security of all the opposition leaders including former premier Nawaz Sharif.

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah would not implicate Khan in a narcotics case but would take measures for his security, he said.

Earlier, he and other accused appeared before Accountability Court-II judge Muhammad Azam Khan in the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) case-regarding an award of LNG Terminal to the ETPL causing loss of Rs21.584 billion to the exchequer.

Yasir Amaan, counsel for accused Saeed Ahmad cross-examined the witness, Nasir Bashir, chief executive officer (CEO) of a private company, while Chaudhry Gulzar Mehdi, counsel for the accused, Miftah Ismail partially cross-examined the same witness. The court adjourned the hearing of the case till July 5.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022