Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) almost admitted on Monday that the Mayfair property in London was owned by none other than Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif himself.

At a press conference, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif never denied his ownership of the Mayfair property in London. “Everyone knows that Benazir Bhutto used to hold meetings at the Mayfair residence. They signed the Charter of Democracy at the same flat,” he told the reporters.

Political observers are not ready to ignore this ‘revelation’ by the country’s security czar as an ‘innocent mistake’. They opine that this statement by Ch Nisar could be a measured move to put further pressure on a prime minister already beleaguered by offshore investment controversy triggered by Panama Papers a few days back.

Reports doing the rounds for quite some time suggest that the gulf between the two Sharifs – Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sahrif – has widened amid a tug of war to grab more powers and this statement by Chaudhry Nisar could be the ‘next step in right direction’ as the interior minister is thought to be the man of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s camp.

During the press conference, Ch Nisar, who looked confidant and in pleasant mood unlike his past appearances during the days of recent sit-in at D-Chowk where he appeared jittery and sometimes emotional, proposed that there should be ‘ethics committees’ in parliament for self-accountability of the politicians. He suggested that he along with other members of parliament should be held accountable through these committees, who must examine how much assets a political leader owned when he started his career and what were his sources of income at that times and that how much he owned now.

Political observers are seeing this proposal by the interior minister another sharp move to tighten the noose around some specific political leaders, especially at a time when the ‘Establishment’ also wants to cleanse the country of corrupt elements.

The interior minister expressed his willingness to meet Imran Khan and hold talks with him over the issue of their announcement of holding a public rally in Islamabad on April 24, the foundation day of the PTI.

The PML-N has apparently singled out PPP and has turned all guns towards it in the ongoing controversy triggered by a mega leak by the Panama Papers. Contrarily, they are engaging PTI in talks, as offered by the interior minister during the press conference.

The growing relations between Imran Khan and Ch Nisar are also being viewed seriously by the quarters concerned. The meeting between a PTI delegation and the newly launched Pak Sarzameen Party by former MQM stalwart Mustafa Kamal is also a significant development. Is someone working to gather political leaders with relatively clean character on a single platform, is to be seen in the coming days.