Hitting out at the opposition yesterday, Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that giving relief to his opponents from corruption cases is an “easy path” for him to take, but it is the “path to destruction”.
“We have to make difficult decisions, and difficult decisions take us forward,” he said while addressing an inauguration ceremony at Islamabad’s National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST).
He said that the country is “going in the right direction”, and that giving an NRO (national reconciliation order: an amnesty from legal action) at this moment would be the easy way out from the difficulties he faces as premier.
“Many times in life, we have the choice of walking two different paths. We are encouraged to take the easy way out,” Khan said.
“You wake up in the morning and you have all the dacoits gathered up against you, and [you want to] go for the easy way and compromise,” he said, perhaps hinting at the political choices he faces these days.
The “easy way” is to “forgive them all and give an NRO”.
“Our lives will also become easy. We will do speeches in parliament and three or four years will go by. But, this is the path to destruction,” Khan warned.
He added that the path to betterment is never easy and that people therefore have to make “difficult decisions” that, in the future, define them.
Earlier in his address, the prime minister expressed his happiness and congratulated the NUST on achieving the feat of producing locally made stents.
He said that in Pakistan and the world, “most people die due to heart diseases”, noting that it is an expensive treatment.
Khan said that the locally-produced stents will benefit the country by saving foreign exchange (by preventing imports) as well as helping treat more poor patients as they will be cheaper in comparison.
“You saved our foreign exchange [reserves] and gave us the opportunity to provide treatment to more poor patients,” the prime minister said.
Khan noted that exports of the country had fallen, adding that no country can prosper when “dollars go out more” and are “coming less” into the country.
He added that, due to this, the country has had to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the country’s “dollars decrease and reserves deplete”.
“Reserves will fall when there is a trade gap of $40bn, the pressure will fall on foreign exchange reserves,” Khan explained.
He also added that the same problem also causes inflation in the country.
“If we want to develop our country, more dollars should come into the country than they go out,” he said.
He shared the example of China and Turkey, which he said had prioritised exports, saying that China’s wealth increased when their exports went up.
The premier also shared that Pakistan’s direction had been on course in the ’60s when its exports were increasing.
The prime minister added that in the ’70s, the country got “confused” with “socialism or Islamic socialism”.
“The direction now needs to be corrected again, and the mindset needs to be fixed. The challenge we face is that government departments need to be told that they have to go on this direction,” Khan said.
Addressing the students, the prime minister urged them to recognise their potential, because if that is not done, they will end up underselling themselves.
“From my experience, the most important lesson I want to give you that will benefit you is that humans have the potential that nothing else has,” Khan said.
He added that, unfortunately, humans “limit their vision so much” that they put a cap on their own potential and put limitations on themselves.
“The number one requirement for it [success] is, ‘What is your vision for life?’ Define what kind of human being you want to be, and when you decide what you want to become, that will define your potential,” the prime minister said.
He told the students that the potential humans have is “limitless”, and urged them not to limit their imagination.
Prime Minister Khan: Forgive them all ... and our lives will also become easy. We will do speeches in parliament and three or four years will go by. But this is the path to destruction.
