Recalling that Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan had dismissed her and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chief Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari as “kids”, Maryam Nawaz of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has said that the same are now giving the premier “sleepless nights”.
“These kids are half your age but they are turning you around their little finger [and] have given you sleepless nights,” she said as leaders of the 11-party opposition alliance Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) on Sunday gathered in Larkana on the occasion of the late ex-PM Benazir Bhutto’s 13th death anniversary for another power show as part of its anti-government protests.
According to Dawn, Maryam once again hit out at the government over inflation and allegedly hiding behind the establishment, telling PM Imran he was not fighting the PDM but the entire population of Pakistan.
“Your war is not with PDM but with the 220 million people of Pakistan whom you have struck like lightning,” she said while addressing the premier, adding that the people had “won” this war.
Maryam said when Bilawal was unable to attend the PDM rally in Mardan, PM Imran was “jumping around with elation” believing there had been a rift within the opposition. She alleged he will say the same about today’s rally which Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman did not attend.
She alleged that whenever these “kids” called him out, Prime Minister Imran hid behind his “elders” and asked them to rescue him.
“These kids’ biggest qualification is that the people of Pakistan are standing with them,” she said, adding that the premier’s alleged dream of creating a rift within the PDM “will never be fulfilled”.
The PML-N leader paid tribute to Benazir’s struggle for democracy, recalling that the Charter of Democracy signed by her father Nawaz Sharif and Benazir “wasn’t just a few pieces of paper; this was a decision for turning the course of Pakistan’s political history that I, Bilawal and all of Pakistan’s political leadership will take forward and advance”.
She said when the PPP government was formed in 2008, many elements wanted it to be brought down but Nawaz “crushed that suggestion even within his own party” and favoured allowing the government to complete its tenure.
“When political parties started completing their terms, some forces to whom ‘divide and rule’ suited started getting restless. Then we saw [former ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja] Pasha set up a party by collecting political trash named the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, and that party was then used in dharnas and conspiracies against your elected government,” Maryam alleged.
She said while politicians were given death sentences and faced character assassinations, those who committed much severer offences such as “breaking the country and the Constitution, losing Siachen and the Kashmir cause, violating one’s oath to interfere in politics, having political rivals killed, and committing corruption worth billions” were not held accountable.
“But remember, ideology cannot be hanged or exiled,” she added.
Accusing former military ruler retired Gen Pervez Musharraf of being “the murderer of the Constitution and of Benazir Bhutto”, she said no one even talked about bringing him back to the country.
“The court that sentenced Musharraf to death [in the high treason case] was hanged itself,” Maryam alleged.
She said although Musharraf could not return to the country, the “brave decision” of the judge who led the bench that handed guilty verdict to him, late Peshawar High Court chief justice Waqar Ahmad Seth, to uphold the Constitution “will not only be remembered by the Pakistani people but also kept alive”.
Maryam also thanked the people of Sindh for their hospitality and Bilawal and his family members for welcoming her early in the morning at their residence in Naudero.
Earlier, Bilawal also delivered a fiery speech wherein he criticised the government and its policies among accusing it of rising to power with the support of the security establishment.
