PM Imran Khan was selected earlier, now rejected: Maryam Nawaz

SKARDU: PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz on Friday lashed out at Prime Minister Imran Khan, claiming that the premier was asking for an NRO but the opposition will not give it to him, Geo News reported.

"He keeps talking about not giving an NRO, how he won’t give an NRO, but now he’s asking us for an NRO. Now he won’t get an NRO," she vowed. PM Imran Khan, she said, was "earlier known as the selected, now he's the rejected".

Addressing a rally in Gilgit-Baltistan’s Skardu region, Maryam took shots at turncoats, referring to them as lotay. She told party workers and supporters in the rally not to vote for such people in the upcoming elections.

"Trap these lotay, do not allow them to hide," she urged her supporters. Nine of the PML-N’s workers were wooed into leaving the party, she claimed, "but my youth, promise me that you will not vote for these lotay”.

“Lotay do not belong inside boxes, these lotay belong to the bathrooms. These lotay, who go limp under pressure from the selectors and the selected, cannot take a stand for the people," the PML-N leader said.

Maryam Nawaz said those who trample over the sanctity of the vote cannot serve the people. "Lotay do not deserve the right to ask for votes," she said. "They should hide their faces and lock themselves in their homes. The future ofmy youth is not for them to write something on social media only to get picked up during the dark of the night.

"Whoever you vote for and whoever comes into power through your votes will not be expelled through any Iqama. Promise me, my youth, that you will protect the servant who comes [into power] through the vote," she told participants of the rally.

Taking a jibe at Prime Minister Imran Khan, she said, "Someone who does not have honour, who carries a begging bowl, who is brought into power and run by someone else, who cannot stand for his right and respect... that person will not stand for you.”

"Those who plan [electoral] rigging, remember that Pakistan has changed in two years. Now, neither will these lotay get votes nor will those who engage in or plan rigging will be spared," she said.

Maryam Nawaz added that those who had committed wrong deeds in the past would "face a public outrage and anger led not by Maryam but by you, my youth".

The PML-N leader told the rally, "I beg Nawaz Sharif, Khaqan Abbasi, Pervez Rashid, and Barjees Tahir not to give tickets to any lotay in future." She said no one at the rally was provided transport to arrive in or chairs to sit on. "What's alive here is only the passion," she said. "If PML-N loses due to rigging, neither Gilgit-Baltistan nor Pakistan will accept that outcome," she warned.

"Only God's people will rule now. Pakistan does not have any way out except Nawaz Sharif. If there's anyone who knows how to solve Pakistan's problems, it's Nawaz Sharif." She lashed out at the prime minister, who had arrived in the region a few days ago to announce that Pakistan was granting Gilgit-Baltistan the provisional province status.

"A few days ago, an 'entertainer' came to Gilgit-Baltistan. He painted a dream of 10 million jobs but 15 million people got unemployed. "He used to say he wouldn't develop the 'Jangla Bus'," she said, in an apparent reference to KP government's Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project. "But then he made it.

"And now those buses are catching fire everyday," Maryam observed. "Neither is he able to run the economy, nor do his buses work properly. He rewards his friends through wheat and sugar [crises] then forms commissions.

"Gains from the wheat and sugar [crises] went into the pockets of those who bear the expenses of Banigala," she added, referring to PM Imran Khan's residence near Islamabad.

Maryam Nawaz said the premier claimed he would make Gilgit-Baltistan a province but vowed "that honour isn't his to claim". "If anyone would make Gilgit-Baltistan a province, it would be Nawaz Sharif.