Following a four-year self-imposed exile in the UK and months before general elections, the former prime leader of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, is scheduled to return here on Saturday.
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 reporters on Friday that after spending about an hour in Islamabad, the speaker will go to Lahore to speak at a gathering at the Minar-i-Pakistan.
The party predicts that Nawaz will arrive in Islamabad around 12:30 p.m. After a few hours, depart for Lahore. 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 extremely hard on Friday to make sure that caravans of party members from Balochistan, Sindh, and Gilgit-Baltistan left for Lahore, and that those who must travel from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab will depart 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.
He was granted protective bail in both instances by the Islamabad High Court on Thursday after the NAB decided not to object to his applications.
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.
