Vote doesn’t give license to commit crimes, says Shafqat Mehmood

LAHORE (Monitoring Desk): Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawmaker Shafqat Mahmood said on Sunday that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s speech in Mansehra holds no worth as vote doesn’t give a license to commit crimes.

Speaking to media after the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo’s speech, the federal lawmaker said that Nawaz focuses on mega-projects in the country to make money through kickback payments.

“They [PML-N] don’t have any interest in education and health sectors,” Mehmood added. “On what grounds is Nawaz making promises now when he wasn’t able to do anything in the past 30 years.”

Nawaz, in his address in Mansehra today, had said that his party’s ‘respect the vote’ campaign demands respect for the people of Pakistan.

“Our call to respect the vote demands respect for the people of Pakistan. This country does not belong to a few people; it belongs to the nation of 220 million people,” he had said, adding that the citizens of this country were not slaves.

In criticism directed towards political rival Imran Khan, chairman of PTI, Nawaz had said ‘naya [new] Pakistan’ was only visible in Lahore and Punjab, as KP and Sindh continue to present a dreary picture of ‘old Pakistan.’

PTI has claimed it will create ‘naya Pakistan’ by bringing significant reforms to all public sectors with a special focus on education and health.

Nawaz, however, had said that all he saw in KP was pollution.

“Had Shehbaz Sharif been serving as the chief minister of KP, he would have turned it around like Punjab,” Nawaz told the crowd. “Go to Punjab and witness the naya [new] Pakistan for yourself.”

The PML-N supremo had further said that his party would create a ‘naya [new] Pakistan’ in the ‘old and dilapidated KP’ if the vote is respected in 2018.