With Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan approving a Rs25 hike in petrol price, yet another tweet from the past has come back to haunt the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
The premier on Friday approved a summary of recommendations to increase the prices of petroleum products “in view of the rising oil prices trend in the global market”, with a notification issued to announce the new rates.
The notification stated that the new petrol prices would come into effect immediately.
Petrol prices, according to the recommendation, were to be bumped up Rs25.58 per litre. Similarly, the per-litre prices of high-speed diesel (HSD), kerosene oil, and light diesel were recommended to be increased Rs21.31, Rs23.50, and Rs17.84, respectively.
The new per-litre prices of petrol, HSD, kerosene oil, and light diesel, therefore, would respectively be Rs100.10, Rs101.46, Rs59.06, and Rs55.98.
With the hike drawing a strong reaction from the general public as people expressed frustration over the development that could result in yet another inflation bomb amid the coronavirus outbreak, some took to Twitter to retweet a statement by the premier from back when he sat in the parliament on opposition benches.
“Absolutely shameful how the govt has dropped a petrol bomb on the poor nation at the start of 2018. Instead of undertaking tax reforms and cracking down on money laundering, the govt continues to burden the masses — this time with a big increase in petroleum products’ prices,” the tweet read.
“Petrol should be sold at Rs58 per litre, demands @ImranKhanPTI [sic],” another tweet from 2015 by PTI’s official handle read.
This isn’t the first time an old tweet has come back to bite the PTI government.
While the same tweets were used to criticise the government after a fuel prices hike in July 2019, a separate tweet from August 2014 read, “All over the world, just on an incident of railway accidents, minister resigns. This is real democracy, says Imran Khan [sic].”
It had started making rounds last month after the tragic train accident in Sadiqabad, which claimed over 20 lives.
Prior to this, as PM Imran reached China amid Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan’s (TLP) nationwide protests last year, a 2012 tweet of his, went viral. In the tweet, he had criticised the then premier for traveling abroad as the country “burned”.
It was aimed at criticising former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, who had traveled to China for the Boao Forum while violence linked to sectarian, ethnic and political tensions continued in different parts of the country.
