ISLAMABAD: Expelled prime minister Nawaz Sharif kept up his diatribe against July 28 Supreme Court judgment that ousted him, five “diamonds” picked up for the Panama Joint Investigation Team (JIT), the contrived ‘minus-one’ formula and his accountability.
Despite pressure being exerted on him from different sides and actors to force him into renouncing his hardline, he stuck to rejection of all visible and invisible machinations being employed against him. The kind of rare accountability Nawaz Sharif has been subjected over a year and a half particularly in the wake of the Panama verdict has not coerced him into giving a second thought to his belligerent stand. He continues to be part of the judicial process but at every available opportunity voices his reservations and its denunciation in a hard-hitting tone.
The intensive urging and advice of the “doves” of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to him to moderate his rhetoric has also failed to change his mind. A negligible number of weak-willed elements of the PML-N have openly spoken against his harsh oratory, emphasising that they are against a confrontation among state institutions. He has also dismissed their pleadings as inconsequential.
Unlike some other politicians, who do not go to bed without nastily commenting against their opponents, Nawaz Sharif doesn’t speak too often. But whenever he has spoken after the July 28 ruling, he has been totally unchanged. The line he adopted on the first day, he has maintained it consistently.
The impressive Quetta show, organised by Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) chief Mehmood Achakzai, further publicly buoyed up the former prime minister. It was attended by PML-N workers as well. The meeting was a part of his renewed mass-contact campaign. He addressed the first rally in Mansehra sometime back.
Nawaz Sharif hit the nail on the head when he stated that the drama of ‘minus and plus’ formula was being enacted for the past seventy years and it has to be dumped once and for all so that Pakistan can progress and tread the democracy path uninterrupted. In his view, it is people’s right to do any politician ‘minus’ or ‘plus’ that can’t be exercised by anybody else.
Most popular parties have been suffering the game of minus and plus to deprive them of their heads. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was repeatedly tortured by it but the scheme never succeeded in the lifetime of its popular stalwarts. Altaf Hussain has to face exclusion because of his incendiary anti-Pakistan harangue at a time when no leader like Pervez Musharraf, who was always willing to keep his eyes shut on his outbursts, was not at the helm of affairs.
This is not the first time that vigorous efforts are being made to politically eliminate Nawaz Sharif specifically to strip him off the stewardship of the most popular party so that he becomes history. During Musharraf’s era, similar powerful attempts were waged to keep him away from heading his party. Even if such plots were ever successful, they can’t be last for too long.
The five members of the JIT inducted in it from different organisations, who the judges described as diamonds, the rare commodity, earned flak from Nawaz Sharif once again. Same was his treatment to the judges, who, he said, themselves took oath of allegiance to the dictator but have declared him dishonest.
The former premier stated that he would have gone home quietly had he been disqualified even for a corruption of Rs5,000. But misuse of not even a single penny from the public kitty was found and he was punished for not taking a salary from his son's company,” he stated amid chants of shame raised by the audience. "How can you remove a sitting prime minister when he did not plunder public money? When you couldn't find any excuse for minus-one formula, you ousted a prime minister for not receiving a salary from his son."
Nawaz Sharif made a dig at Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan saying that this dancing and singing party would fail even in the 2018 general elections. “They taunted Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif by dubbing the metro project as the ‘jangla’ bus, but they have now started a similar venture that they could not take up in four years.”
His emphasis on ensuring the sanctity of vote persisted as he stated that the electorate would stamp their approval on this phenomenon in the upcoming polls. They will tell everybody that they have the right to vote in or vote out any prime minister and just five persons have no right to give such decisions.
While revenge in the name of his accountability is being carried out ruthlessly, the ex-premier said, the dictator who pushed Pakistan in darkness for doing nothing to do away with loadshedding has not even been touched and has not been asked questions. He recounted his massive development agenda for Balochistan, and expressed solidarity with Achakzai saying that the PML-N and PkMAP are tied in the ideological bond.
