Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) Senior Vice-President Maryam Nawaz on Monday alleged that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is seeking early elections nationwide because there will be “no one to help them win” later.
Alleging that a “judicial establishment” was facilitating PTI chief Imran Khan, she accused the Supreme Court of striving to bring him back to power. “I am asking CJP [Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata] Bandial and the three-member bench why and for whom are you doing this?” she said at a workers’ convention in Lahore coinciding with Labor Day. “After Imran Khan’s long march, Jail Bharo Tehreek, and other tactics failed, a new judicial establishment has come forward to his rescue,” she claimed, adding that the PTI was aware that if these judges retired, it would have a tough time in the polls.
Maintaining that the PTI chief had only dissolved the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa assemblies because he knew his “facilitators” were present in the Supreme Court, she questioned why they wanted to “impose” him on the public once more. “He [Imran Khan] doesn’t know what he is saying,” she said, recalling that the PTI had initially demanded its resignations from the National Assembly be accepted but was now demanding they be allowed to return to Parliament. “The owner of this country is not you [Imran] or your drug-addled mind, but 220 million people,” she added.
“If you take out the nine years of Nawaz Sharif, you will be left with the ruins of the last 65 years. Why has no one done anything about it?” she questioned, as she reiterated allegations of Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, taking gifts from the Toshakhana to sell.
To the apex court, she said its rulings would not deter Parliament from enacting laws. “You will have to accept the decision of Parliament and the Constitution and law of this country. Parliament will have its decision obeyed. Constitution and Parliament is supreme,” she said.
Singling out former CJP Saqib Nisar, the PMLN leader accused him of orchestrating the ouster of Nawaz Sharif. She also condemned the contents of recently leaked calls that had featured the former CJP and, allegedly, the family members of the incumbent CJP. While stressing that she did not agree with a anyone’s private calls being leaked, she said these calls were important because they discussed actions that could decide the country’s fate. “Nobody has the right to tap anyone’s private conversation but a discussion in which the country’s fate is decided does not qualify as a private conversation,” she said.
Referring specifically to a call allegedly between the mother-in-law of the CJP and the wife of a PTI lawyer, she said: “They were not discussing the recipe for gajar ka halwa, but talking about a conspiracy to bring Imran Khan back to power.” Referring to a call allegedly between Nisar’s son and a PTI ticket-holder, she said the “son of a thief turned out to be a thief,” and alleged that the former CJP had likewise taken money for the Panama verdict against her father.
The PMLN leader said Imran Khan was a major hurdle to progress in Pakistan, claiming further than an “entire gang” was responsible for the ills facing the country. “This gang includes retired Army officials and former and sitting judges as its members,” she alleged, adding that foreign countries continued to have apprehensions about Khan returning to power. “Wherever [P.M.] Shehbaz Sharif goes, the people there ask him if Imran Khan was returning to power,” she claimed.