Former Federal Board of Revenue Shabbar Zaidi has clarified that he criticised the system not the PTI in his recent interview where he spoke in detail about his stint as the body tasked to collect taxes in the previous government.
“I have criticised the system not the party,” he said in a tweet on Friday. “I have publicly said that there was no defect in IK [Imran Khan economic policy, however ‘Mafia’ blocked.”
The clarification comes after a couple of his statements about the economic policies of the Imran Khan-led government. In an interview with Geo News’ Shahzeb Khanzada, Zaidi claimed that the PTI won’t have gained five per cent votes if the-then finance minister Shaukat Tarin’s stint would have continued.
He substantiated his analysis by saying that the Khan-led party would have collapsed by the end of the term. It merits here to mention that only a few clips of the interview were released on social media which irked many followers of PTI.
In his tweet, Zaidi suggested not to make comments on the basis of clips being run. “See complete interview. I will ensure that there is no unnecessary editing.”
The clips showed that how some politicians tried to block the tax collection efforts when the former FBR chief asked some landowners and steel owners to pay taxes. It also shows how apparently Asad Umar did not inform the-then prime minister Imran Khan about the country leading towards default.
In reaction to Zaidi’s claims, Umar wondered how Zaidi came up with such a story. He wondered how Pakistan was on the brink of going default while having foreign exchange reserves worth around $9 billion.
In one of the clips, he said that Khan didn’t care and he thought he was indispensable because of “being different” from the other two politicians in Pakistan.
Zaidi shared that after leaving the office he advised the PTI chief to sit with the opposition.
But the former FBR chief was “glad” that the controversy would result in people watching the interview and listening to the main issue: retailers and agriculturalists pay no tax in Pakistan.
“Have mafia like control and the burden solely falls on the salaried class and the formal sector which I belong to,” he said.
In reaction, the PTI alleged that Zaidi’s comments were a desperate attempt to establish distorted perceptions regarding the economic strategy of PTI against the facts.
Zaidi’s contradictory and baseless claims are signs of a “confused mind”.
