Prior to his four-year absence from Pakistan, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif lamented the “very chaotic” scenario there on Saturday. He also expressed optimism that his PML-N party was “competent” to lead the cash-strapped nation out of its current predicament.
Former finance minister and PML-N stalwart Ishaq Dar said that the 73-year-old Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo would travel in from Dubai to Islamabad on a leased aircraft.
Dar informed media on Friday that after spending around an hour in Islamabad, the speaker will go to Lahore to speak at a gathering at the Minar-i-Pakistan.
Speaking to reporters at the Dubai airport, he lamented the current state of the nation, saying it was far worse than in 2017, when he had been stripped of his political office by the Supreme Court and then found guilty of two counts of corruption by an accountability court.
“The situation is not better than 2017…and it pains me to see all this that our country has gone back instead of going forward,” he said, adding that it was necessary to reflect on how the nation ended up in the predicament.
Nawaz was reported by Geo News as adding, “The situation in Pakistan is very chaotic and that is very worrying.”
Before leaving the airport in Dubai, he said, “We are capable of solving the country’s issues.
“People in Pakistan are going through a lot of agony and suffering, but there is still hope for things to become better. Only we have the power to clean up the disaster we made.
When questioned about the polls, he said that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had the authority to choose the date.
Speaking about what happened to him after his conviction in 2017, he said that he had given all to God and that he had returned to Pakistan successfully.
The party predicts that Nawaz would arrive in Islamabad at 12:30 and depart for Lahore two hours later. Later in the day, he could go for Minari-Pakistan after first going to his Jati Umra home.
Nawaz is traveling to Islamabad rather than Lahore because he has to make bail, which was already granted by the Islamabad High Court on Thursday, according to the Dawn newspaper.
A PML-N senior from Punjab stated, “Putting on an emphatic show for the return of Nawaz Sharif is very important to tell everyone around that the PML-N still is a popular party in Lahore, which was once its citadel.”
And since there is so much more at risk in this situation, the party leadership will be successful.
He said that Nawaz’s entry would provide the party the much-needed boost it required as the nation prepared for national elections in January. He said that “he will head the party’s polling campaign and win the premiership for a fourth time.”
The PML-N leadership in Lahore, which includes Shehbaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, and Hamza Shehbaz, worked very hard on Friday to make sure that caravans of party members from Balochistan, Sindh, and Gilgit-Baltistan left for Lahore, and that those who had to travel from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab left on Saturday morning.
The party’s organizers only set up 10,000 seats on Friday, despite the grandiose goal of gathering one million attendees. Thousands of Punjab police officers would be assigned to security responsibilities within and around the arena, both in uniform and in plain clothes.
Aspirants for tickets have officially been warned by the PML-N that if they fall short of the necessary attendance goal on Saturday, their candidacy may not be taken into consideration.
Only Nawaz would speak at the open gathering, claims the party.
Additionally, the PML-N has reserved two small planes to drop rose petals on Lahore on Saturday.
Nawaz traveled for London in November 2019 on a medical leave of absence after receiving a four-week bail extension from a higher court. He was halfway through his seven-year prison sentence for the Al-Azizia corruption case at the time.
Since then, Nawaz has consistently missed hearings on sentencing appeals, leading to his designation as a proclaimed offender in the Al-Azizia and Avenfield corruption trials.
NAB did not object to the applications he submitted, thus the Islamabad High Court on Thursday granted him protective bail in both instances till October 24.
He resigned as prime minister of Pakistan in 2017 after the Supreme Court declared him ineligible for public office for the rest of his life after an investigation into his family’s riches in the wake of the Panama Papers leak in 2016.
Sharif has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and described the situation as being driven by politics.
