World News | Big Blow to Imran Khan as Yet Another Party Leader Quits

Islamabad, Dec 8 (PTI) In a big blow to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, former finance minister Shaukat Tarin on Friday quit the party as well as politics due to financial and health reasons.

Tarin, who served as PTI's finance minister and finance advisor in 2021-22, also decided to resign as a senator. He was elected as a member of the Senate in December 2021.

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Khan, 71, has been in jail since August 5, when he was arrested after a conviction in the Toshakhana corruption case.

Tarin is the latest leader to part ways with the PTI since it ran into troubles after the May 9 misadventure by its supporters who attacked military installations and earned the ire of the powerful establishment.

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Earlier, several leaders like Asad Umar, Usman Dar, Fawad Chaudhry, Shireen Mazari, and Pervez Khattak had quit the PTI, while some of them like Mazari and Umar also said good-bye to politics.

Dawn.com reported that Tarin said that the last two-and-a-half years had been “very challenging” for him, both financially and due to his “deteriorating health” after “double Covid episodes during my time in office.”

“Therefore, at the insistence of my family and friends, I have decided to resign from active politics for good and move on,” Tarin said. “Hence, I am resigning from PTI and also from the Senate of Pakistan,” he said.

“I want to thank all those colleagues and friends who have helped me along this journey,” he added. Tarin also said that over his political career, he had helped different political parties manage the economy.

“In 2008-10 as finance minister under PPP (Pakistan Peoples Party), I helped save the country from impending default and stabilised the economy. Also concluded a consensus on the National Finance Commission award after 19 years,” he said.

He went on to say that as the finance minister during the PTI government, he “clocked the best economic performance in 17 years as stated in the economic survey of Pakistan of 2022”.

Tarin said that he tried to pay back the country for the last 27 years at “great personal costs” as he followed in the footsteps of his father, a Pakistan Movement veteran, according to Dawn.com.

Earlier last month, neatly summing up the phenomenon of multiple party leaders not just quitting Khan's PTI but also politics, Dawn - in an analysis about how the party had gone from “heights of popularity to facing obscurity” - said, “Ever since the events of May 9, PTI leaders have been leaving the Imran Khan-led party. It is almost like clockwork how each member goes through the same process: getting ‘picked up' or arrested, coming forward, condemning the May 9 violence, and then quitting the party - and/or politics altogether. Wash, rinse, repeat.”

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)