By Our Staff Reporter
Islamabad: Pakistan’s former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, regretted on Sunday that none of the country’s elected prime ministers had been able to complete their terms, saying, “Iqbal did not dream of this Pakistan.”
Sharif, 70 years old, Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) Supreme, has been living in London since November last year when the High Court of Lahore granted him permission to go abroad for four weeks for treatment.
Speaking at the PML-N Social Media Convention, he said, “Once again the constitution has been violated, those who created the country have been called traitors, popular leaders have been jailed, and leaders have been made to be robbers.”
Sharif said that public votes had been “stolen” and accused the government headed by Prime Minister Imran Khan of indulging in truce in the 2018 elections, Dawn reported.
“Until now, none of the (elected) prime ministers have been allowed to complete their constitutional term. Every few years, democracy is attacked and martial law is imposed,” Sharif was quoted as saying in the report.
“Tell me, hand on your heart, is this Quaid-i-Azam’s Pakistan?” he asked.
Pakistan’s strong army, which has controlled the country for more than half of its 70 plus years of life, has exercised tremendous influence in terms of defence and foreign policy.
Sharif, though responding to the criticism of his speeches critical of the military, said that it was “treason to expose those who had formed a state above the state.”
Undemocratic powers have begun propaganda via social media that Nawaz Sharif’s narrative is encouraging the country’s enemies.
“These undemocratic forces have choked freedom of expression in the country, choked the poor and the unemployed, crushed them with inflation, these are painful things, but all they are concerned about is how to stop Nawaz Sharif,” he added.
Sharif, who has been staying in London since November last year after being allowed by the courts and the government to go there for eight weeks for medical care, has accused army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and ISI spy agency Lt Gen Faiz Hameed of interference in the 2018 elections and the establishment of Imran Khan’s puppet government.
In absentia, he was sentenced to 10 years of strict imprisonment by the anti-graft court in one of the three cases of corruption against him in the Panama Papers scandal of July 2018.
Sharif resigned as Pakistan’s prime minister in 2017 after the Supreme Court disqualified him from holding public office and ruled that corruption cases had been brought against the beleaguered leader and his children in the Panama Papers scandal.