LAHORE: Former prime minister and Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) Quaid Nawaz Sharif has said he has always abided by the Constitution and the law, but suffered due to those, who violated their oaths in different capacities.
Addressing the parliamentary party meeting here on Monday, he demanded that those acting against the Constitution must face punishment, adding that his opponents violated the Constitution and toppled his government again and again.
He regretted that those believing in the Constitution and law were eliminated to fulfil some nefarious designs. He said he was an elected prime minister but ousted in 1999 after being declared as a hijacker, and for not receiving salary from his son on the basis of Black Law Dictionary, which had no room or justification under Pakistan’s law. he said he was fired for not getting salary of about one lakh rupees from his son; the purpose was only to remove the prime minister and bring in a selected one.
The PMLN supremo said someone should have asked how a person, who was a prime minister in the morning, turned a hijacker by night.
He said in 2018 elections, a government brought by the Results Transmission System (RTS) failed to deliver, even build a single motorway. He said if the PMLN government had not been toppled, all projects of motorways would have been completed until now. “Who eliminated terrorism from Karachi? We extracted coal in Sindh, and electricity is being generated from it. We established a 2200-MW power plant in Karachi.
“I will ask the people of Chitral that they should get built tunnels from me, and vote for someone else. He claimed that what was built from Karachi to Hyderabad was not a motorway. “We are progressive people, who mitigate sufferings of the poor,” he said.
He added that he ended electricity load-shedding in the country and brought CPEC [China-Pakistan Economic Corridor] to the country. “We said good bye to the IMF; we were repaying foreign loans and we did things in Pakistan which others could not,” he claimed.
Earlier, the 12th meeting of the PMLN parliamentary board was chaired by Nawaz Sharif and Party President Shehbaz Sharif in which two sessions of interviews were held for candidates, who wanted to participate in the upcoming elections on the ticket of PMLN from Sindh province.
Party’s Chief Organiser Maryam Nawaz and other senior leaders including PMLN Sindh President Bashir Memon and Election Cell Chairman Senator Ishaq Dar also participated in the meeting.
Recommendations about the candidates were presented by the provincial organisation of Sindh, including the divisional coordinator, divisional president and general secretary. The meeting discussed matters of Sindh province candidates in general and Karachi in particular. Candidates’ qualification and seat adjustment with other political parties were also considered.
A detailed review of establishing a wider provincial electoral alliance with the MQM, GDA and Jamiat Ulema Islam-Fazl (JUIF) was also discussed.
Sources said while talking to the PMLN office-bearers from Sindh, Nawaz hinted that Shehbaz may contest election from Karachi too. Sources said he asked the PMLN Karachi to start a campaign for Shehbaz Sharif. However, no official confirmation of the development was given by the PMLN leadership.