KARACHI: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader and former Federal Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin on Saturday said his audio was tampered, and don’t waste time on giving certificates of traitors.
Tallinn told a news conference in Karachi, “It is a legal offence to eavesdrop on someone’s conversation that has been leaked by tampering with our audio. We have not leaked any audio. There are concerns that IMF transactions will be affected by the audio leak. , then why did they leak, why did they leak on the same day.”
Tallinn claimed that if the IMF heard the recordings, the real problem would arise. “Although it won’t affect the plan, as the surpluses in the provinces are in the form of memorandums of understanding (MOUs).”
Elaborating on the matter, he said the PTI wrote the letter to spend money in the provinces in the event of flooding. “So we can go and tell them to give us relief like they did during Covid.
He recalled that in January, when the previous government was going to the global lender for the sixth review, it had faced massive criticism from the opposition.
“Their top leadership had said that the IMF agreement should be torn and called it an attack on our sovereignty. But we never called them traitors. Instead, we took it as political discourse.”
Expressing disappointment at the accusations of being a traitor, Tarin said that it was high time all the political parties, including the PTI, moved past it. In a democracy, you have the freedom to voice both agreement and dissent.
“We have a disaster in front of us and it calls for us to unite and fight it together,” he said, and advised the government to provide relief to the people in these testing times.
“Don’t waste your time on giving certificates of traitors. We want to work on this together,” Tarin added.
