SHEIKHUPURA: Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Nawaz Sharif has lamented that despite carrying out several development projects during his past three tenures as prime minister, he has been ousted from power prematurely.

Addressing a large public meeting here on Sunday, the former prime minister, without mentioning names, asked the leaderships of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and the Pakistan Peoples Party to tell the nation how many projects their governments had initiated during their stints in power.

Referring to his disqualification “for not taking salary from my son’s company”, Mr Sharif said he would give up politics forever if embezzlement of government funds worth even Rs10, Rs100, Rs500 or Rs1,000 was proved against him.

Urging voters to “avenge disrespect” of their mandate, the ousted prime minister taunted PTI chairman Imran Khan by saying that those waiting for raising of the umpire’s finger would face wrath of the voters in the general election.

“The politicians who look towards the ‘umpire’s finger’ will have empty ballot boxes in the general election.”

He told the crowd that he had not seen such a large gathering in the history of Sheikhupura and thanked them for according a disqualified prime minister such a warm welcome, asking whether they would avenge the insult of their mandate [by the Supreme Court’s Panama Papers bench] in the elections.

“The nation will avenge in the elections the troubles it was subjected to during the past 70 years.”

Taking credit for containing loadshedding and terrorism as well as for restoring peace in Karachi, he said that if the PML-N won the 2018 elections it would provide justice to the people at the doorstep and launch more and more mega projects to facilitate them.

Earlier addressing the gathering, his daughter Maryam Nawaz, who was presented a gold crown by local traders, said the people would take revenge for Nawaz Sharif’s “unjustified” disqualification in the coming elections.

Urging the people to support the PML-N narrative of sanctity of vote, she said that protecting such sanctity was a ‘sacred duty’ of every Pakistani.

She said Nawaz Sharif had been implicated in a “false and fabricated case of plane hijacking” and confined to Attock jail in 1999 and later exiled to Saudi Arabia for seven years. But, she added, Nawaz Sharif’s supporters again elected him prime minister “because he is the only sincere and patriotic leader” in the country.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2018