LAHORE: Former Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday said that his party Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) will register a historic victory in the 2018 elections.
Addressing his party’s social media convention in Lahore, Nawaz Sharif said that the performance of the government was before everyone in the country and the opposition parties will have to bite the dust.
In a fiery speech before a charged crowd, Nawaz Sharif reminded the workers of the promises he had made in 2013 election campaign and claimed to have fulfilled them now. He said that he had promised the nation that load shedding will be history by 2018 and it already was history now.
“Today we have surplus electricity. It is not a small achievement. This is an achievement that will become part of history. We had ample electricity production when I was ousted by Pervez Musharraf in 1999 but when I returned from exile, the country suffered from such load shedding that there was no electricity for even 20 hours a day”.
“Do you remember how things were in Balochistan when I had come to power? Do you remember how Nawab Akbar Bugti was martyred by Pervez Musharraf? Will there ever be a judiciary in this country that will take Musharraf to task for his crimes? Yes. That case will be decided. This country is not going to go back. We are heading into future now. Things cannot continue like this”.
“Such crises aren’t solved within four years. We looked load shedding right in the eye and finished it four months ago. But the economic process is again at a halt after my removal from the position. Stock market was at 19,000 points when I took over, it kept going up for four years and the day I was ousted, the stock market was at 54,000 points. Today it is back to 38,000”.
Nawaz Sharif boasted about the motorways and roads in the country that the government made. He claimed that Lahore-Multan Motorway will most probably be completed by next year and Islamabad-Mansehra Motorway is also under-construction.
“Do you remember how things were in Balochistan when I had come to power? Do you remember how Nawab Akbar Bugti was martyred by Pervez Musharraf? Will there ever be a judiciary in this country that will take Musharraf to task for his crimes? Yes. That case will be decided. This country is not going to go back. We are heading into future now. Things cannot continue like this”.
The former PM said that his case had been decided within few weeks but a case had been registered against Musharraf for Bugti’s murder but the court hadn’t decided the case as yet.
He said that he was in college when his Model Town residence was built but he was being asked questions about it. “The first factory owned by Sharif family was established in 1937. I am being interrogated on properties owned by family when I was just a college student. But a ‘favourite’ is let off despite confession and the court limits the investigators against him to last five years only, and not before that”, he said.
“All my assets are declared. There was this one salary only that I did not even receive and had no plans to receive either. But I was ousted. Meanwhile, [Imran Khan] confessed to have owned an asset but was told by the courts that he had do such assets and was clean”, he said.
Nawaz said that no corruption was proved against him but ‘they’ were looking for excuses to oust him. “It is not about me. It is about the dignity of the constitution”, he said.
“You call me coward? You were hiding in Rawalpindi during 2009 Long March”
PML-N president said that there is a man who calls him coward “but when I broke all the barriers to march on to Islamabad for the restoration of the judges in 2009, this man went into hiding in Rawalpindi. Shehbaz Sharif did everything he could to find him but he was nowhere to be found”, said Nawaz.
Lashing out at the judiciary, Nawaz Sharif said that Pakistani courts ratified dictators’ coups, allowed them to ruin the constitution and took oaths on PCO.
“Cases made against me go back to when I wasn’t even in politics and my father ran the business. Today, even my children are facing the same cases”.
He said that free judiciary was a key point in PML-N’s manifesto back in 2013 elections too but this time the struggle will be for justice. “Opponents term it as an anti-judiciary campaign but they are only fooling themselves. The campaign is for the honour and prestige of the courts”, he said.
“I have been arrested previously as well. I was handcuffed. I was handed life sentence. I was thrown into Attock Fort. These verdicts don’t matter”.
