PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif on Saturday stressed the need to improve relationships with Pakistan’s neighbours, wondering how the country could achieve a global status while there were disagreements with bordering nations. Addressing the party’s parliamentary board meeting in Lahore, he said: “How can you achieve a global status when your neighbours are upset with you, or you are with them? “We have to fix our affairs with India and Afghanistan as well, [and] strengthen them further with Iran and China,” he asserted. His statement comes amid Pakistan’s frigid ties with India – seen in sports as well as verbal exchanges between leaders – and with Afghanistan due to terrorism concerns and the ongoing deportation drive. Nawaz emphasised that a government should not only focus on the economic and financial performance but “show its performance in every sector”. He recalled that during his party’s tenures, two Indian premiers – Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999 and Narendra Modi in 2015 – visited Pakistan. “Did anyone come before them?” he asked. The ex-PM then criticised the PTI government for “trying to sabotage” the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. He further said that there was “only talk but no work” about making use of the country’s coal resources. At the outset of his address, the PML-N supremo recalled that Pakistan’s “economic indicators were going forward” during his party’s 2013-2018 tenure. He asserted that the rupee maintained its position for four years and the world recognised that Pakistan was well ahead in the development speed and would achieve a great status in not just the region but in the world. “That dream should have been fulfilled but such factors and characters came in between who brought a well-running Pakistan to a grinding halt,” Nawaz said. He went on to say that since then, the country’s economic development ceased and the GDP rate and currency began a downward spiral. The PML-N supremo stated that the basic reason for the high inflation rate was that the economy had been “mismanaged”. Urging the party leaders to “note when it started being mismanaged”, he said it started in 2019 and till 2022, when his brother and PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif became the prime minister, “everything” had receded. “I do not understand how a country’s governance is handed over to an inept person. You take the powers from a well-run government and hand them to an inept person,” he said in an apparent reference to former premier Imran Khan. Nawaz also spoke about the electricity issues facing the country, stating that previously there was “only the issue of load-shedding but now Imran Khan’s government has also created the problem of power prices for us”. The former prime minister asserted that his party’s top aim of coming into politics should be to solve the myriad of issues facing the country, including poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and underdevelopment.