ISLAMABAD: PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz on Tuesday said the PTI-led government is heading towards its fate and its ouster is a matter of days and not weeks or months.
“As I go through the panicked statements of Imran Khan and his ministers, it gives an impression that his government is heading towards doom,” she said after attending the hearing in the Islamabad High Court. She maintained the country cannot afford the incumbent government even for a single day, seeing its incompetence and poor performance. “Not to talk of bad performance, there is no performance at all,” she said.
She observed that the way the country was being governed, it seems that the government is in more hurry than the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) to send itself packing. “As soon as we get rid of the government, it will be better for the country,” she said.
To a question, Maryam said it would be in the national interests that the mistakes of the past are not repeated and the country is governed as per the Constitution. Responding to another question about the information minister’s claim that four PML-N leaders met someone to replace Nawaz Sharif, she said there are heaps of incompetence and lawlessness in the country and that is why the government circles spread such fabricated news, so that the media should not talk about the price hike and other problems and Murree tragedy. She said that not even a single member of the National Assembly or the Provincial Assembly left the PML-N, which is in opposition, but the PTI parliamentarians openly humiliate and criticize their leadership at party’s meetings and during the parliament session.
She said the government attempted in the past to disrepute Nawaz Sharif by running smear campaigns against him and even tried to harm him physically. “They will fail in their designs to harm Nawaz Sharif,” she said and told a questioner that it is the party which will decide Nawaz Sharif’s return to the country.
Referring to 23 deaths in the Murree tragedy, she said the government holds victims responsible whenever such a tragic incident occurs in the country. Meanwhile, Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said from the very first day, the opposition leaders had a wishful thinking that they would succeed in removing the PTI government after six months, and they are still yearning for that.
In a statement on Tuesday, he said they have already passed four years with such illusions and the next five to six years seem to make no difference for them. As regards the criticism of PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz against the government, he said even children do not take her remarks seriously.
On the other hand, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib said on Tuesday the PTI came into power through the votes of people and it would complete its constitutional tenure. In a statement in reaction to the media talk of Maryam Nawaz, he said she is part of a lost caravan. He said the opposition has held seven long marches, but they are being humiliated time and again. Nawaz Sharif is a certified thief and corruption has been proved against him, he said.
The minister said the Supreme Court of Pakistan had disqualified Nawaz who will have to return to face accountability cases. Nawaz did not have any medical treatment in London and became an absconder to escape accountability process. He said the government is ready to give Nawaz a return ticket but his place is in the Adiala Jail. "Nawaz will have to return to the country and give an account of his looted wealth", he said.
He said fighting is going on inside the PML-N as its leaders are trying to bring down one another. Shehbaz Sharif wants to politically harm Maryam Nawaz and she also wants to harm Shehbaz Sharif. He said four more PML-N leaders have come forward, who want to replace the party leadership.
Farrukh opined that Prime Minister Imran Khan is the only obstacle for the PML-N because in the past, they used to get ‘NROs’. He said that according to the claims of the PML-N leadership, the PTI government was supposed to fall last December, but it has completed 3 and a half years and would complete its term.