–Minister says Jahangir Tareen had Asad Umar removed as finance minister last year
–Says infighting between Tareen, Umar and Qureshi allowed incapable people to fill political vacuum
Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry has stirred controversy after he revealed in an interview that Jahangir Khan Tareen had played a role in Asad Umar’s removal from the Finance Ministry last year.
In an interview with Voice of America (VoA), he said that infighting between Umar, Tareen and Shah Mahmood Qureshi affected the party a lot.
“There was a lot of expectation from PTI and Imran Khan,” Chaudhry said. “The public had not elected us or the prime minister to fix nuts and bolts but to reform the system.”
“When the Panama case was resolved I and few others had a chance to speak to Imran Khan and at that time I felt his ideas were very clear when it came to reforms,” he added.
“The way he said the chief ministers had become dictators in Sindh and the National Finance Commission [NFC] Award should be there along with police reforms, judicial reforms, it was very clear at that time what Imran Khan’s vision was,” he further said.
Chaudhry said that one of the main problems was the infighting between the PTI’s senior leadership that included Umar, Tareen and Qureshi. Hence, this led to a political vacuum. “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.
This infighting affected the party a lot especially the political class, he stated.
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.
“There is no leader like Imran Khan in the Muslim world. You can disagree with him but look at the Turkish leadership which is unacceptable to the West or the Iranian and Saudi leadership which has its controversies. Imran
Khan is the only leader who brought the Muslim world together,” he said. “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.
“The best people should have been there [appointed to government positions] but it affected the way things were,” he added.
When asked why despite having the political might of Qureshi, Tareen and Pervez Khattak in the federal cabinet, things turned out the way they were, the minister said they tried to make them [Tareen and Umar] reconcile but it could not happen. “When [Asad] Umar became the finance minister, [Jahangir] Tareen had him removed as the finance minister. Then when Umar came back [to the cabinet] he had Tareen removed. Similarly, Qureshi met Tareen to talk, but nothing could materialise,” Chaudhry said.
“I could not understand because fights happen in parties but I think the internal fights between these top three to four leaders not only affected the party but the entire political class whose place was then taken over by bureaucrats,” he added.
