Fawad blames intra-party rift for PTI govt’s dismal show

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry said that there was no leader of Imran Khan’s caliber in the whole Muslim world.

“You can disagree with him (Imran Khan) but look at the Turkish leadership which is unacceptable to the West or the Iranian and Saudi leadership which has its controversies,” he said.

“Imran Khan is the only leader who can bridge differences between the west and the Muslim world,” Chaudhry said, but admitted that there had been no progress on this issue as well due to the internal problems being faced by the PTI government.

To a question, he blamed an intra-party rift for Imran Khan government’s failure to introduce reforms or implement its vision.

“The rift between senior leaders – Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Asad Umar and Jahangir Tareen -damaged the party and it has been one of the main reasons behind Imran Khan’s vision not going according to plan,” Chaudhry told the Voice of America.

He went on to claim that Jahangir Khan Tareen was the man behind Asad Umar’s ouster as Finance Minister.

“There were a lot of expectations from PTI and Imran Khan. The public had not elected us to fix nuts and bolts but to reform the system.”

“When the political vacuum was created, it was filled up with new people who were not from politics,” he said. “When your core team was disturbed it was filled with new people who were frankly not aligned with ideas and won’t be and don’t have the capacity to either,” he added.

Responding to a question about whether the prime minister did not get an experienced team or if he was at fault for the way he was governing, Chaudhry said the team was selected by PM Imran.

Chaudhry continued, “I can understand about Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto who took weak people and gave them important positions because they had the vision to transfer their leadership [to their children],” he added.

“They had no other vision,” Chaudhry said, adding that PM Imran did not have the same problem.