high powered delegation of the IMF has met the President of Pakistan and the Chief of the Army Staff , ex-Senator Professor Khurshid Ahmad expressed his shock and horror

Islamabad(August 9, 2012): Professor Khurshid Ahmad, ex-Senator and Naib Amir, Jamaat


e Islami Pakistan, has expressed his shock and horror on a report published in the press
that a high powered delegation of the IMF has met the President of Pakistan and the Chief
of the Army Staff seeking assurance from them in respect of implementation of whatever
conditionalities are agreed to between Pakistan and the IMF in the ongoing negotiations to
seek bailout from the IMF. He has warned that further borrowing from IMF would be even more
disastrous to economy than the one which have put us into the present mess, both because
of the flawed, contradictory and anti-people economic policies of the Government and the
unrealistic conditionaltities imposed by the IMF.

Prof. Khurshid has strongly condemned efforts to involve the President and the Chief of
Army Staff in this deal. Under the Constitution it is only the Chief Executive who has to be
involved, and as has been the practice, he too was only involved not directly but only through
the Finance Minister and the Governor of the State Bank. Involvement of the President and
the COAS, according to Prof. Khurshid, would be violative of the Constitution and a threat to
Parliamentary democracy. It is all the more alarming that those who are crying from hill top
about threat to democracy and supremacy of the Parliament are in fact trying to disrupt the
whole system by bringing in President who is supposed to be a symbolic head and the COAS
who has no business in relations to economic policies and IMF negotiations. He has invited the
Political Parties and the Parliament to take immediate note of this disastrous development.