Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Awami Muslim League (AML) Chief Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed has claimed that more than 60 lawmakers were all set to part ways with the ruling Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) and only waiting for the ‘whistle to blow’.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Member of National Assembly (MNA) Jamshed Dasti in Multan, on Wednesday, the AML leader said ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s party members had decided to distance themselves from confrontation and out of those 60 members of the National Assembly (NA) – 20 to 25 belong to southern Punjab. The firebrand leader said today the word “Na Ahel” (disqualified) precedes Nawaz Sharif’s name throughout the world.

“No one in the country opposed Nawaz Sharif’s ouster [as the prime minister]… only Nawaz Sharif kept on asking ‘Mujhay Kyun Nikala?’ [Why was I ousted?],” he added.

Rasheed said the deposed premier did not even allow his younger brother, Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif, to head the party despite being disqualified from becoming a parliamentarian.

The biggest conspiracy against democracy, the AML chief said, were ‘five families’, adding that Shehbaz Sharif’s Hudaibiya Paper Mills case was the ‘mother of all crime’, which if opened will sink the Sharif family. Rasheed went on to say the country was destroyed economically as Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has practically shelved the ministry, adding that Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was looking for a new finance minister.

Published in Daily Times, October 26^th 2017.