Strife between Tareen, Qureshi and Asad Umar affected PTI, Fawad Chaudhry

Federal Minister for Science and Technology, Fawad Chaudhry on Tuesday said that internal strife between Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Planning Minister Asad Umar and PTI leader Jahangir Tareen caused damage in the party.

In a recent interview with Voice of America, Chaudhry said, “There was a lot of expectation from PTI and Imran Khan. The public had not elected us or the prime minister to fix nuts and bolts but to reform the system.”

Chaudhry said that one of the main problems in the party was the internal strife between the senior leadership of PTI that included Asad Umar, Jahangir Tareen and Shah Mehmood Qureshi and this created the vacuum.

“When the political vacuum was created, it was filled up with new people who were not from politics,” he said. “When your core team was disturbed it was filled with new people who were frankly not aligned with ideas and won’t be and don’t have the capacity to either,” he added.

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This infighting affected the party a lot especially the political class, he stated.

“The best people should have been there [appointed to government positions] but it affected the way things were,” he added.

Chaudhry was asked, why despite having the political influence of Qureshi and Pervez Khattak in the Cabinet, things turned out the way they were? He replied the question saying they tried to make them [Tareen and Umar] reconcile but it could not happen.

“When [Asad] Umar became the finance minister, [Jahangir] Tareen had him removed as the finance minister. Then when Umar came back [to the cabinet] he had Tareen removed. Similarly, Qureshi met Tareen to talk, but nothing could happen,” Chaudhry said.

Fawad Chaudhry further said, “I could not understand because fights happen in parties but I think the internal fights between these top three to four leaders not only affected the party but the entire political class whose place was then taken over by bureaucrats.”