GUJRAT: PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz says the next election would be held when Nawaz Sharif would decide on it and asks how Imran Khan would face the people in the election with zero performance during his tenure.

She predicted that the PTI chief would fail if he tried to shift the burden of his poor economic performance to the PML-N. She said the game was now out of the hands of Mr Khan who was trying to escape the accountability of the public after his party government’s bad performance. She said the PTI government had laid landmines for the country’s economy and put it on a ventilator.

Maryam was addressing a rally of the charged PML-N workers in Kotla town of Gujrat on Sunday.

She assured the PTI chief of provision of security even more than that of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif if he produced the video in which he had recorded names of those who had made a plan to assassinate him.

Asks Imran to produce the video regarding assassination bid

“Imran Khan, don’t wait for any tragedy to take place although I am sure that the talk of video is yet another lie and let me guarantee you (Khan) that Nawaz Sharif has a big heart and he will ensure provision of security for you more than Shehbaz Sharif’s,” she said.

“I will ask Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah to get that video from Imran Khan and tell the latter to not to wait for any tragedy to happen,” said Maryam who added that she would pray for the life of Imran to watch the victories of Nawaz Sharif Taunting the PTI leader for threatening to withdraw the facility of air conditioners from Nawaz Sharif in the jail, she reminded him that it was Nawaz who had visited him in a hospital by suspending the election campaign ahead of 2013 polls.

Read: For the PML-N govt, there are two ways forward now — call fresh elections or set the house in order

Maryam said Imran had not blocked the establishment’s phone numbers as it was the other way round because the establishment’s numbers had changed while the people of Pakistan would term Khan a wrong number when he would go to seek votes.

She said the PTI chief should himself have called for a fresh election when he was in power instead of begging for support from the allies and added that now everyone in Pakistan was looking towards Nawaz as he had always been a centre of attention of Pakistani politics.

In his address, Punjab Chief Minister Hamza Shahbaz announced to bring the sugar prices down from more than Rs100 per kilogram to Rs70, saying that the announcement in this regard would be made within the next 48 hours while the ghee and flour prices would also be decreased.

He said his government did not believe in the politics of victimisation but warned Imran against creating chaos in the country through hate speeches as such a situation had been costing the public and country heavily.

Issuing a warning to the former PM, he said if Mr Khan did not mend his ways the jail doors would be opened for him like the courts had been opened at night to uphold the constitution. He pledged free medicines for cancer patients and relief steps for other patients in public hospitals.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2022