LAHORE, May 15: Former PML-Q president Mian Azhar says former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto and ex-chief minister Shahbaz Sharif should return home and play their role in national politics. In a press statement here on Sunday, he said the Sharifs had made a serious political mistake by leaving the country.

He said the next few weeks would be very important as changes in the ruling party as well as the government would be impossible for anyone to stop. In his opinion, President Musharraf still had the time to return to his original agenda and rid the country of what he called looters and land grabbers.

Political stability, the former governor said, would be elusive unless the political field was cleared of mafias and people were empowered to take their decisions.

Criticizing the people at the helm of the ruling party, Mian Azahr said those unable to take their allies along could not be expected to take the party or the people with them.

He said in the existing setup, the local elections would be nothing more than a farce as the rulers had already planned to impose their ‘employees’ on the local bodies. He said these institutions would lose their relevance if ‘mafia’ got control of them.