HYDERABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) senior leader Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan has said that now Nawaz Sharif holds guarantee for Imran Khan’s government’s stability and he is not going to return, nor can the government bring him back because he has started telling the British establishment that there is a “hostile” government in Pakistan and he will not go there.

Ahsan was talking to journalists here on Wednesday after appearing before a division bench of Sindh High Court’s Hyderabad circuit in connection with the bail application of a business tycoon, Iqbal Z. Ahmed.

“Nawaz Sharif is a guarantee to the stability of Imran Khan’s government,” he said. He said that silence of the Sharifs and their stay abroad was not without purpose.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had created hype about the illness of Nawaz Sharif as if he was going to die if he was not allowed treatment abroad. Imran Khan was pressing the Sharifs for submission of bonds of $2bn to $3bn if they wanted to remain abroad for treatment.

“They [Sharifs] bargained in kind instead of cash,” he claimed.

He said the Sharifs were successful in saving money and both brothers still managed to proceed abroad. “Now there is no talk of illness or pain. He [Nawaz] was not admitted to hospital in the UK for a single day though he was visiting restaurants and strolling,” he said and added he was the same Nawaz Sharif who was “dying” and now 15 weeks had passed.

Sharif, he claimed, had met the UK’s establishment. When he got bail in Pakistan, he met Maulana Fazlur Rehman, judge Arshad Malik and politicians, he said, adding that he would have taken advantage of bail further. “Now the government cannot bring him back regardless of its repeated claims that it is going to bring him to Pakistan,” he said.

He said the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) regime had no economic direction, but the present opposition was not united as well. The PTI government was a disaster as far as the economy was concerned, but the opposition was also not united and the opposition leader was staying abroad without any reason.

He said Shahbaz Sharif was healthy and he had given a surety in the court for bringing his brother back to Pakistan. “Shahbaz [Sharif] can only request his brother to accompany him to Pakistan as flight has been booked whereas Nawaz Sharif can say he is not going to return. Will [he] then bring Nawaz in [a] suitcase?”, he sarcastically said.

He said the prime minister declared abroad that on his return to Pakistan he would get air-conditioner and fridge removed from Nawaz Sharif’s cell in prison whereas Nawaz was telling the UK’s establishment that a hostile government was working against him in Pakistan so they should not send him back. “The UK never repatriated anyone to Pakistan. Altaf Hussain hasn’t returned to date and Ishaq Dar is living there.”

Maulana Fazlur Rehman staged his march to get Nawaz released and he remained successful in achieving his goal. He said the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief had brought “a few Pathans” from three districts of Zhob, Dera Ismail Khan and Bannu.

He told a questioner that Asif Zardari and Faryal Talpur never left the country. Only history would decide whether Nawaz Sharif’s medical reports were true or untrue. He said Asif Zardari was more ill than Nawaz Sharif, but he did not seek permission for proceeding abroad as he only questioned his trial in Islamabad when all accounts mentioned in case were registered in Sindh.

He said Asif Zardari was a man of few words and that too in lighter vein whereas the Sharifs, including Maryam Nawaz, were known for delivering fiery speeches and coining terms of ‘khalaee makhlooq’. He said the PML-N had given a guarantee that the party would not vote against Imran Khan’s government and Sharif would stay abroad whereas Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Ahsan Iqbal would keep facing everything.

But, he said, Sharif got a unique legal relief in which a convict was allowed to proceed abroad.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2020