Nawaz says he could’ve sacked subordinate

ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday said it is true that an officer of an intelligence agency had asked him to resign from the office during the 2014 protest sit-ins but he didn’t initiate any proceeding against him as he never let go his patience.

He said this while talking to media persons outside the Accountability Court (AC) here on Thursday.

“To remove Pervaiz Rasheed and Mushahidullah Khan from their ministries also showed my patience and bearing every odd,” Nawaz Sharif said. “My opponents are using immoral tactics against me to melt me down and to break my resolve but they have a sheer misunderstanding,” he maintained.

During the proceedings, Nawaz Sharif became very upset about his daughter facing the court trial and said that how they could involve her in these cases when she was not even in politics in the 90s. “How much condemnable an act may be that one spread his fire of vengeance to every member of a family who does not even have any connection with it or with government issues. Such a merciless game, that you even involve daughters and put them into the docks (katehra) to face court proceedings. They should not take the issues to an extent where return is not possible. I would go through these tough times somehow but the result of this attitude will suffer everyone. My daughter is standing in the docks before my eyes and for the reasons when she wasn’t even in politics. Such odd and immoral traditions are being introduced into politics,” Nawaz Sharif complained.

Maryam Nawaz, while intruding into his discussion, said that she had told the judge that he was talking about 1974 when the Gulf Steel Mills was established, then she was only a one-year-old child.

Nawaz Sharif said that the perpetrators would also suffer and they would have to pay for what they did. “Aim of creating this country was much different than this. For the last 70 years, we have become a laughing stock for the world,” he said.

To a question that General Asad Durrani had endorsed his view in his recent book that General Musharraf deceived him during the Kargil war, Nawaz Sharif said that everyone would endorse his view now.

About his statement before the accountability court, Nawaz Sharif expressed his astonishment that every channel and newspaper had covered it the last day.

Addressing the media, Nawaz Sharif said if they wanted to establish the right form of democracy here in Pakistan, they would have to stand up.