ISLAMABAD: Awami Muslim League (AML) president Sheikh Rashid Ahmed in his “victory speech” even before the announcement of his constituency result on Wednesday night felicitated the nation for giving their verdict in favour of Imran Khan and said his prediction that the PTI would form the government after the elections had come true.

Speaking to a charged crowd from the balcony of his famous Lal Haveli residence amid fireworks and loud music, Mr Ahmed at the same time cautioned that if the fate of Pakistan under the leadership of Imran Khan was not changed, they would destroy the entire “system”.

Mr Ahmed announced that the new PTI government would form an independent foreign policy free from US influence, stabilise dollar-rupee parity and improve foreign exchange reserves.

The AML chief presented the fut­ure agenda of the PTI government even before any words from Imran Khan after completion of the polling process.

“Today Pakistan has won,” he said, while criticising PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif for rejecting the poll results.

“When the people have shown respect to the vote, Shahbaz Sharif has started crying,” he said, in an apparent reference to the PML-N’s election slogan “respect the vote”.

The AML chief thanked Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar and Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa for making the elections happen. He also hailed the Elections Commission of Pakistan (ECP), saying though the commission had committed “excesses” to him by deferring the polls in NA-60 constituency after the disqualification of PML-N’s Hanif Abbasi in the ephedrine case, he said he was thankful to it as well.

He warned that Shahbaz Sharif and former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi would soon face the music and ultimately land in Adiala jail where Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam had been undergoing sentence in the Avenfield Apartment reference.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2018