LAHORE: PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz Sharif has taken a gibe at the ruling PTI saying the government is ‘powerless’ as the order to release senior columnist Irfan Siddiqui has been issued without even bringing it into the notice of the prime minister.

“This is the level of the selected and his government. The decisions are taken and withdrawn while he [the prime minister] is totally unaware of. What’s the use of such a rule wherein the government and the selected are humiliated on a daily basis and they are left as bystanders! But the talk of respect and ego can be understood only by the respectable,” reads her tweet issued in response to a press conference by the Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Accountability, Shahzad Akbar.

Ms Nawaz also embedded a combo of TV screen grabs of Mr Akbar’s presser and of National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser’s.

Mr Siddiqui, an adviser to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, was released on bail on Sunday two days after he was arrested by police for violating the tenancy act in a late-night raid.

Responding to one of her followers’ tweet that the bail plea of Mr Siddiqui was accepted after the prime minister learnt that Maryam Nawaz’s speeches were written by herself and not Mr Siddiqui, she said: No, it is because it [the arrest decision] backfired. There is a limit to everything and that limit has been crossed. Whatever excesses they commit now will only be counterproductive. So watch out!

In yet another tweet she denied a claim made by a senior journalist that Nawaz Sharif as prime minister had asked for sacking of some [army] officials and tendering of apologies on a tweet issued from the official account of the director-general of the ISPR, public relations wing of the armed forces.

“Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif neither demanded dismissal of anyone nor sought tendering of apologies by others. He had only stated that he was a humble person and didn’t want anyone to seek his forgiveness. But, yes, the tweet containing the word Rejected is an insult of the elected prime minister and the Constitution and that must be withdrawn.”

The ISPR had in a tweet back on April 29, 2017 rejected the report issued by the PM’s office regarding a news leak report. The tweet was withdrawn after about 10 days.

Commenting on JUI-F president Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s threat of marching on Islamabad in the month of October if the incumbent government didn’t resign next month (in August), she said “unlike a similar march by Imran Khan when except some individuals involved in the behind the scene conspiracy masses were not part of it, a very big people’s power is behind the Maulana. If other parties joined in [the march] then if God wills, the game will end. Those arrogant of power know that a war cannot be waged against the masses. The end of the conspiracy will be terrible, if God wills.”

Then in opposition, the Imran Khan-led PTI had earlier marched on Islamabad in August 2014 and then attempted to lockdown the federal capital in November 2016.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2019