Daily Times

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz on Wednesday lashed out at Prime Minister Imran Khan for suggesting in a national address a day earlier that opposition leaders want an NRO-type deal from him, saying the prime minister will be himself asking for an NRO in a few days.

“If my father had asked for an NRO, a 100 NROs will have fallen into his lap,” Maryam said while addressing a public gathering in Zafarwal area of Punjab’s Narowal district. “You keep talking about NRO [but] you have no authority to give an NRO,” she said, addressing Prime Minister Imran Khan. “You will be going around asking for an NRO in a few days yourself,” she added.

“The talk of an NRO did not suit coming from a person who is dependent on someone else for everything,” Maryam said without naming anyone. “The country was rapidly progressing and witnessing development in all areas until the PTI government took over from the PML-N government,” she said.

While addressing the gathering, Maryam also commented on the general election of 2018. “Nawaz Sharif’s victory in the 2018 elections was stolen from him,” she said, explaining how, under her party’s leadership, Pakistan was prospering, power projects were being set up, and terrorism was wiped out. She went on to say that the former prime minister was removed from power ‘over a joke of an Iqama issue’.

The PML-N leader hit the NAB as well, saying the anti-graft body ‘doesn’t see past [former chief minister of Punjab] Shehbaz Sharif, Hamza Shehbaz, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi or Saad Rafique’. The anti-corruption watchdog, she went on to say, doesn’t see the incumbent government’s ministers either. “Imran Khan was brought into power. The Election Commission of Pakistan possesses proof against Imran Khan and the PTI,” she said. “Imran Khan lives in a 300-kanal house yet he pays Rs 100,000 in taxes,” she claimed.

Pointing out how ‘no one dares bring this wanted man to the court’, she talked about how the Bani Gala residence of Khan ‘was built without an NOC’. “Can anyone dare demolish Bani Gala?” she asked.

Maryam also mocked the prime minister’s statement during his address that the cases against PML-N and PPP leaders were not instituted by his government, but by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). She asked whether it was only NAB’s fault, and not Imran’s, if the accountability watchdog filed corruption cases against PML-N leaders but did not investigate allegations against the prime minister or his sister, Aleema Khan.

Maryam said NAB is instituting another case against Nawaz Sharif for using bulletproof vehicles for his travel as the prime minister, but the bureau did not notice Imran Khan using the KP government helicopter like a rickshaw while he did not hold any government office. She said the prime minister, when he had not been ‘brought into power’, used to say that there was one law in Pakistan for the rich and another for the poor. “In reality, there is one law for the rich and the poor throughout Pakistan and another for the ladla,” she alleged.

Criticising the federal budget unveiled by the PTI government, Maryam, while referring to Prime Minister Imran Khan, said a person who never earned through his hard work could never know how a common man survives while making Rs 15,000 a month.

Apparently referring to the reference filed against Supreme Court’s Justice Qazi Faez Isa, Maryam alleged that the prime minister had sent a reference against a ‘transparent’ judge to the Supreme Judicial Council “because he is habitual of attacking from behind while hiding.” “If you have the courage, come forward [and] say, ‘I have sent [the reference]’, say, ‘I have set up the cases against Nawaz Sharif’,” she said while addressing the prime minister.

Maryam said the prime minister in his address had announced the formation of a commission to investigate the loans taken by the previous governments in the last decade but questioned why he did not want to go further into the past. “Do you not go back further than 10 years because it was the government of your master [Gen Pervez] Musharraf then?” she asked the prime minister.