LAHORE: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has distanced itself from senior leader Aitzaz Ahsan’s remarks against health of Nawaz Sharif and says party policy on the issue has been given by Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

“The party believes that Mian Nawaz Sharif is under treatment [for heart and kidney complications] and as a former prime minister deserves to be given each [medical] facility he needs for his treatment,” PPP Information Secretary Dr Nafisa Shah told Dawn by phone here on Friday.

She was responding to a query about Mr Ahsan’s statement reported by a private TV channel in which he had alleged that Nawaz Sharif secured fake reports about his health condition from the family-owned hospital so that he could find an excuse for going abroad in the name of treatment while the PML-N superemo’s younger brother Shahbaz Sharif has already reached London.

Mr Ahsan had also alleged in the statement that the Sharif family had struck a deal [to get relief in various corruption cases].

Referring to rejection by the Supreme Court of the former premier’s plea to go abroad for treatment, Ms Shah said “the PPP respects verdicts of courts. But the judiciary has better allowed Mr Sharif to go abroad for treatment if his doctors have recommended so.”

It may be recalled that Mr Ahsan had earlier spoken ill of late Begum Kulsoom Nawaz when she was getting therapy for cancer at London by saying the hospital she was admitted to was owned by the Sharifs and was not meant for cancer patients.

On her demise there, the PPP leader had to tender his apologies for his words which hurt the Sharif family.

The PML-N had refused to support Mr Ahsan in the presidential contest in 2018 until he sought forgiveness from Nawaz Sharif, who was then imprisoned in Adiyala Jail, Rawalpindi.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2019