KARACHI, Oct 12: Pakistan Muslim League-N president Shahbaz Sharif has said that Pakistan is passing through a severe crisis and asked Gen Pervez Musharraf to hand over power to elected representatives of the people.

Addressing a press conference by phone from London at the Karachi Press Club on Friday, he said October 12 would always be remembered as the blackest day in the history of the country when eight years ago an elected government was overthrown by a general.

The PML-N leader called the recent presidential election as a hoax because Gen Musharraf got himself re-elected in uniform from a parliament which was nearing its demise.

He criticised the National Reconciliation Ordinance and said it had been promulgated by Gen Musharraf to lure politicians to help him get re-elected in uniform, ignoring national interests.

Answering a question, he said giving indemnity to politicians facing corruption charges was not part of the Charter of Democracy signed by the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, as claimed by Ms Bhutto.

He asked why did Gen Musharraf not take the initiative for national reconciliation when armies of Pakistan and India were facing each other in 2001 and President Bush forced him to side with the United States in its war against terrorism after 9/11 attacks.

He claimed that there was complete harmony during the rule of Nawaz Sharif, but now blood of innocent people was being spilled in North and South Waziristan, food inflation had gone sky high as flour, which was available at Rs5 per kg in open market before the 1999 military takeover, was now selling at Rs20 per kg.

The PML-N president said that law and order situation had gone out of control, all records of corruption were broken by this government, public money was being spent on expensive cars for VIPs, official residences were being refurbished to turn them into palaces, particularly in Punjab.

The National Assembly Speaker had built a house for himself at a cost of Rs100 million.

He said the present rulers had planned to build two luxury hospital complexes in Islamabad and Karachi at a cost of Rs6 billion, at a time when even basic medicines were not available to the common man in government hospitals.

He said that even two years after the 2005 earthquake, the affected people were living in the open in Azad Kashmir and the NWFP because reconstruction work was going on at a snail’s pace.

He said that he and Nawaz Sharif would return home soon to take part in nation-building work.

In reply to a question, he recalled the ordeal he and his brother had faced when they returned home on May 11, 2004, and September 10, 2007, respectively, and forcibly sent back to Jeddah.

Answering another question, he said that it was not Nawaz Sharif, but the then president Farooq Leghari, who got cases registered against the PPP chairperson.

On the contrary, he said, Ms Bhutto had filed false cases against his brother.

Earlier, Sindh PML-N leader Sardar Rahim said Gen Musharraf’s rule had pushed the country to the brink of collapse.

The people were striving to get rid of the military rule and to restore genuine democracy in the country, he added.