Daily Times

RAWALPINDI: Awami Muslim League (AML) leader Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed has on Monday said that Sharif brothers will get no deal this time. “They are not getting an ‘NRO’ this time even if they visit every single Arab country in the world”, he said.

Former Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shehbaz Sharif, Punjab Chief Minister (CM), are currently in Saudi Arabia where they are rumoured to be cutting some deal for them in order to avoid accountability process, which they often term as ‘victimisation’, currently going on in the country.

It is pertinent to mention here that a news story published in The Times had claimed that Sharif might be allowed to go into self-exile under a deal brokered by Saudi Arabia. The claim had been rubbished by Nawaz Sharif’s daughter Maryam Nawaz in a tweet, which said that ‘exile will be the fate of military dictators and non-democratic characters, not of representatives elected by the people’.

Also read: Shehbaz up to something significant in Saudi Arabia

Shehbaz Sharif had left for Saudi Arabia where he reportedly met a number of senior Saudi officials. Nawaz Sharif also left for Saudi Arabia on Saturday amid speculations that some kind of ‘deal’ was being brokered by the Saudi royal family, which has long had cordial relations with the Sharif family.

What’s NRO?

NRO was an ordinance issued by former President Pervez Musharraf in 2007 when he had struck a deal with the former PM Benazir Bhutto (late). Under this ordinance, all the cases against the leaders and workers of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and some other parties had been withdrawn by the government. In return, PPP had abstained from voting against Pervez Musharraf in his presidential election. Under the deal, Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan was made possible.