Don’t know when the govt would go: Maryam

ISLAMABAD: The PML-N Vice President, Maryam Nawaz, has said after such a long struggle, talks about any deal are baseless.

While talking to the media outside the Islamabad High Court (IHC), where she came to attend the hearing of her appeal Tuesday, she said she doesn’t know when the government would go, but whenever it goes, then it would never come back to power. She said time will come when everyone will have to be answerable. She was confident that if fair elections were held, the PMLN would emerge victorious in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

Maryam said the PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif represented the party at the Swat rally, while she was assigned the responsibility of campaigning for AJK elections. She said the PMLN would not remain silent. She slammed any talk of deal with the PTI government, terming it misguiding. “Why will there be any deal? [...] Are we mad to have a deal with those we are [fighting] against?” she questioned.

She was of the opinion that that PMLN was strong in AJK and was hopeful of the party’s win in the Valley if fair elections were held. On foreign policy, Maryam held that foreign policy was not political, it was in fact a national policy. She was of the view that it was unfair to tell the nation something else if the real policy was different from what was told.

Maryam said she believed the government is making preparation for recognising Israel as “it is not even issuing a denial” to reports and statements from news agencies emphasising on Pakistan’s reported acceptance of the Jewish state.

The PMLN vice president claimed that her party had clear proofs of government’s rigging in the AJK polls, adding that she was not merely levelling allegations of rigging. She warned of dire consequences if the government tried to rig the AJK polls. She accused the government people of kidnapping the election staff ‘but still you lose’.

Maryam said time will come when we would demand an answer how the Relational Database Service (RDS) went down during the last general elections in the country. She said it was the PMLN which brought down the loadshedding from 18 hours to zero. “But today the country is facing a crisis of gas and electricity,” she said, adding that government should speak the truth and should not hoodwink the nation.

The IHC has adjourned Maryam Nawaz and her husband Capt (R) Safdar Awan’s appeals till July 15 after rejecting their counsels’ request for putting off the case till three weeks.

Meanwhile, an Islamabad High Court bench comprising Justice Amir Farooq and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kiyani heard the appeals of Maryam and Capt Safdar (R) against their conviction in the Avenfield properties. Both the petitioners were present in the courtroom.

At the outset of the hearing, Maryam and Capt Safdar’s counsel Amjad Pervez pleaded to the court to put off hearing of the appeals at least for three weeks mentioning that he just recovered from COVID-19 and his back was still hurting. But Justice Farooq remarked that the case did not complete in just one day, saying they needed to start it anyhow. Justice Kiyani said the court could arrange a chair for the counsel. Justice Farooq said he did not want to delay the case for long and the bench adjourned the hearing till July 15.