Daily Times

PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz on Wednesday vowed that the opposition will not allow Prime Minister Imran Khan to become a ‘political martyr’, a private TV channel reported.

Speaking to media outside Islamabad High Court after a hearing of the Avenfield reference, Maryam said that the prime minister ‘should not even attempt to be like Nawaz Sharif’ as he was ‘an elected prime minister who came into power through the votes of the masses’. Maryam went on to say that Imran Khan’s identity is to conspire against the elected prime minister and to hold a 126-day sit-in. She was referring to the PTI’s 2014 sit-in in Islamabad. She said one does not simply become a lion by cloaking oneself in the creature’s hide.

Maryam raised a question on Imran Khan’s identity and said that it is confined to ‘conspiracies’, adding that he has ‘nothing to do with the principles of law and democracy’. She said that the premier will have to ‘answer for his conspiracies’.

Speaking further about the so-called ‘conspiracies’, she said that if the use of ‘magic’ has yielded such success, then it should be put to use to alleviate the petrol, diesel, flour crises. “If your magic is so successful then why don’t you use it for the good of the people?” she asked. “There is no rule of law in the country right now,” Maryam said. “Imran Khan is not a constitutionally appointed leader,” she said, adding that he is in fact “guilty of violating it”. The PML-N leader said that her party’s struggle is “against individuals like Imran Khan”.

Maryam responded to the rumoured differences within the opposition’s Pakistan Democratic Movement alliance. “There are no conflicts within PDM,” she insisted.

She also spoke of NAB’s request filed at the IHC seeking cancellation of her bail as well as that of her husband in the Avenfield properties reference. “I wish to see who my sympathiser in NAB is who has applied for a revocation of bail,” she remarked, adding that their face should be exposed before the nation. “The person should be given not a 21-gun, but a 22-gun salute,” she added.

Maryam said that she fears neither getting arrested nor being implicated in a “fake case”. She said her father, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has already declared that he has left such matters to the will of Allah. “Go ahead, revoke my bail, arrest me, so that the people can see how fearful you are,” she challenged the government.