Pakistan is already facing existential challenges and the Opposition is furthering the dilemma with their political circus, said Friday Prime Minister Imran Khan in his interview. Talking to a private TV channel the Prime Minister said the opposition had from the very first day his government assumed power that this government is incapable and that it has been defeated.
PM Imran Khan said he has not taken a single off-day since he became prime minister, adding that nor did he go on a private trip anywhere.
Whereas talking about the preceding government and their supremo Nawaz Sharif, he rhetorically said why Sharif is so famous in India these days.
Nawaz Sharif has become India’s hero today, said PM Khan, claiming that Sharif was doing something that India does against Pakistan and since he is furthering the Indian narrative against us, he’s become their favorite.
At the moment, India is being ruled by the most anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim government and it was their malicious attempt to get us blacklisted in Financial Action Task Force (FATF) global trade list.
He added that on the other hand, it was the opposition parties that blackmailed us with FATF-related legislation in Pakistan. It was the opposition due to which Pakistan landed it in the grey list to begin with, he said.
Nawaz Sharif’s anti-Pakistan narrative?
A recent survey has found that a majority of Pakistanis feel that former premier Nawaz Sharif’s criticism of the establishment represents an ‘Indian narrative’ — a talking point that has also been pushed multiple times by government representatives.
Quarterly Performance Evaluation Survey #QPES
Quarter III
The survey findings show that highest number of respondents in the last two years are ‘indifferent’ (neither satisfied nor dissatisfied) about Prime Minister Imran Khan’s overall performance.More in attached video pic.twitter.com/jKJCGw5a8x
— Pulse Consultant (@PulseConsultant) December 2, 2020
Conducted by Pulse Consultant, a leading market and opinion research company, the survey reported that 51% of the respondents believe that Nawaz’s attacks on the Pakistani state are representative of an ‘Indian stance’, while 23% said the remarks are political in nature and 26% said they could not comment on the matter.
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Echoing another popular refrain from Prime Minister Imran Khan, about 39% of the respondents of the survey said they agreed that the “opposition alliance was formed to hide their corruption”.
PDM’s narrative
PDM has been seen carrying an anti-establishment narrative since its creations. Nawaz Sharif named the Army Chief and DG ISI for political engineering in the country. “General Bajwa is responsible for installing incompetent Imran Khan,” he said while addressing PDM rally from London.
Similarly, senior PDM leader Mehmood Khan Achakzai in his speech had said “though Urdu is lingua franca, it’s not our language”.
Later on, MQM’s Faisal Subzwari said that the silence of all opposition parties against the anti-Urdu statement seemed to suggest that it was the collective narrative of the opposition.
“Rejecting Urdu as the national language and that too from a place located under the shadow of Quaid’s mazar is a matter of serious concern,” he said, adding: “The leadership of opposition should have demonstrated responsibility.”
Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP) leader Maulana Shah Owais Noorani demanded an independent Balochistan in Quetta while addressing a rally of PDM. “We want Balochistan as an independent state. Today, Balochistan looks like an underdeveloped area of the country,” Maulana Owais Noorani said.
PML-N’s Ayaz Sadi had said that “I remember Shah Mahmood Qureshi was in the meeting in which Imran Khan had refused to attend and Chief of Army Staff General Bajwa came into the room, his legs were shaking and he was. Foreign Minister said for God’s sake let Abhinandan go, India’s about to attack Pakistan at 9 pm”. Not only the foreign minister but also DG ISPR rubbished the statement.
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Notably, there is an opinion that the opposition is likely to fail due to an obvious that it has no anti-government plan. “The opposition will not be able to sell out its narrative. Khan’s government has a success story when it comes to Foreign Relations, it has an exemplary performance when it comes to defeating COVID-19, and Khan’s speeches at the UN made him a hero,” a senior bureaucrat told GVS. The officer was of the view that the opposition could set the agenda on high inflation but that is insufficient to shape an anti-government narrative when the current government seems to have done more than its capacity.