PTI urges IMF to link grant of financial facility with ‘good governance’

ISLAMABAD, Feb 28 (SABAH): The PTI on Wednesday wrote a letter to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), calling on the global lender to ensure that its guidelines regarding “good governance as well as conditionalities” were satisfied before granting a financial facility to Pakistan.

It also demanded an election audit of “at least 30 per cent of the national and provincial assemblies’ seats”, which the party said could be accomplished in “merely two weeks”.

Last week, PTI Senator Ali Zafar had said imprisoned PTI founder Imran Khan would write to the IMF and urge it to call for an independent audit of the February 8 general elections before continuing talks with Islamabad.

He said that the IMF, the European Union and other organisations had a charter that stated that good governance was needed for working in the country or giving a loan. “The most important condition for good governance is democracy,” Barrister Zafar said, claiming that the people’s mandate was stolen “in the darkness of the night” during the polls.

However, the party’s move was met with severe criticism from political forces. The party’s rivals PML-N and PPP had said that writing such a letter would be akin to inviting foreign intervention in the country’s domestic affairs.