{Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and does not present itself as the truth. Learn to take a joke; you’ll live longer.}
Speaking to reporters from a bank of the Gilgit River near the Shandur Lake, former finance minister and former PTI member Asad Umar said that the era of harebrained schemes that was synonymous with the party’s stint at federal government is now over.
“I have had a lot of time to introspect and know where some of our government’s faults might have lay,” said the former minister. “In fact, I had time to self-reflect on this much before our government was made to leave, because I was relieved of my position as finance minister much earlier.
“We’re moving beyond stupid ideas like giving people hens or bulls to raise, and getting the overseas Pakistanis to pay off our loans or crowdfunding five-billion-dollar dams as if it were a set of sewing machines for a group of women that we were raising money for; no! We’re going to be taking a more realistic, grown-up approach the next time we come into power,” he said.
“And my scheme, if we were to ever come into power: we will develop the tourism industry in Gilgit Baltistan and that alone is going to pay off our IMF loans! Yes, it’s an obvious answer that was in front of our eyes all along and we didn’t even think about it,” he said.
“There I was, when I first took oath as finance minister, trying to delay the IMF program by taking on loans from elsewhere. All I should have done was to book a trip to Skardu with the PM and myself. His star power alone would have attracted a huge flurry of international tourists,” he said.
“People keep saying that a delay on my part on getting on to the IMF program set in motion a chain of economic events that made the government extremely unpopular, but my efforts were being sabotaged from within the party!”
“For instance, when I had told Jehangir Khan Tarin that a Nigerian prince had been emailing me, saying that he had a lot of case stashed away in a Swiss bank account and that he was willing to help us out in exchange for $5000 so he could just get to Zürich, he asked if I was out of my mind! No wonder Chairman Khan threw him out of the party.”
Chairman PTI Barrister Gohar, when contacted, said that if Asad Umar says he has learnt from his mistakes, then so does the PTI, and that the likelihood of Asad Umar becoming the finance minister again if the party ever comes to power is the same as that of Usman Buzdar becoming CM Punjab again.
“Highly likely, that is.”
