LAHORE: PML-N’s chief organiser Maryam Nawaz said on Friday that her father Nawaz Sharif was returning to the country, but stopped short of giving any specific date for his homecoming.

“Nawaz Sharif is coming back and when he returns the country’s progress will begin,” she told the party workers in Faisalabad. Indirectly, she pinned no hope on coalition government led by her uncle, Shehbaz Sharif, to deliver.

Nawaz Sharif has been living in the United Kingdom since November 2019. His party is trying to secure court relief for him in Al-Azizia corruption case in which he was serving seven-year term at the Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore before his departure to London on a four-week bail on ‘medical ground’.

Ms Sharif also remained adamant that there would be no elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa until the “wrongs done” to her father were righted and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan was held accountable in different cases.

Although Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who is also president of the PML-N, on Thursday invited applications from the ‘interested candidates’ for the party tickets for elections in Punjab scheduled for April 30, Maryam’s ‘clear message’ to the party workers that polls were unlikely to take place has further compounded the confusion in the party ranks.

Since Maryam Nawaz has been calling the shots within the PML-N after assuming the party’s top slot a couple of months ago, the leaders and workers are looking up to her for a ‘direction’ regarding contesting polls.

The PML-N leader further said the elections would be held only after accountability.

“The elections will be held only after both sides of the scale of justice are balanced. Before the elections certain decisions have to be made,” she declared.

She said when the country was bound to implement the agreement made by Imran Khan’s government with the IMF, Shehbaz Sharif had ordered provision of free wheat flour to 80 million poor in Ramazan in Punjab, while he also directed the governments of other provinces to do the same in the holy month.

She also complained that her party leaders had undergone up to two years imprisonment, while those of PTI got bail in two hours. “Is this acceptable?” she asked.

Maryam also criticised the Panama bench that disqualified her father in 2017. She was critical of former chief justices Saqib Nisar and Asif Khosa.

“They [the judges] will not be forgiven for disqualifying Nawaz Sharif and imposing Imran Khan on the nation,” she said, adding that those who conspired against her father were now confessing to their ‘crime’. Imran Khan’s facilitators were running away, she said.

Speaking at the convention in Faisalabad, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said a plan was afoot to arrest Imran Khan.

“Let me tell you that Imran Khan will certainly go to jail... he will soon be arrested,” he declared.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2023