Miftah Ismail on Friday hinted that his time as finance minister could be cut short, saying that the government has 13 months but he \u201cmay not even have that much time\u201d.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t know how long I will stay, but the government, God willing, will stay for 6.5 years,\u201d he said at an event at Karachi\u2019s Institute of Business Administration (IBA).
\n\u201cBut, to be honest, I work here in a way that I will stay forever. Pakistan will always stay, right? So you have to plan in a way [\u2026] that works for the next five years. And then it is the choice of those who come next,\u201d Ismail stated, expressing confidence that the party would win the next election.
\nThe minister\u2019s comments come amid rumours of an internal rift and speculation that the PML-N is considering replacing Miftah with the party\u2019s key financial wizard and former finance minister Ishaq Dar, who is currently in London.
\nSigns of the purported friction were visible as early as May, less than two months into a PML-N coalition coming to power following the ouster of former prime minister Imran Khan through a no-confidence vote.
\nPML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz, who was once seen as the party supremo\u2019s heir, had openly endorsed at a May 19 rally in Sargodha Imran\u2019s demand for fresh elections while the new coalition setup was struggling in the face of an economic crisis.
\nThe new regime, since the start of its term, was presented with grave economic challenges and had been under pressure to make a hard choice between going for early elections or taking tough decisions to save the country from default at the cost of losing political capital.
\nAt the Sargodha rally, Maryam had been of the view that it was wiser to opt for fresh elections than burden the masses with price hikes.
\n\u201cNawaz Sharif is listening to my speech in London. He will say goodbye to the government but not pass on the economic burden to the people of Pakistan,\u201d she had said.
\nMaryam\u2019s remarks had come a day after the ruling coalition decided to complete its term, which ends in August 2023.
\nMore recently, there were reports of Nawaz being upset over the PML-N\u2019s loss in the crucial by-polls on 20 seats of the Punjab Assembly \u2014 a defeat that paved the way for his party to lose the country\u2019s most populous province to the PTI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Miftah Ismail on Friday hinted that his time as finance minister could be cut short, saying that the government has 13 months but he \u201cmay…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":242,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}