LAHORE, Dec 2: Almost a year after being exiled to Saudi Arabia along with the rest of the Sharif family members, former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif alleged on Sunday that he was banished against his consent.
In the first ever formal statement issued here through his former press secretary, Mr Shahbaz disputed official spokesman’s assertion that the return of some female members of the Sharif family to Pakistan was a violative of the agreement. Rejecting the statement as absurd and false, he said there was no such agreement under which the women members of the family could not live in Pakistan.
The statement said that it was Dec 7 last year when he was in Landhi Jail, Karachi, that a “representative” from Islamabad came to him to tell that the Sharif family was being sent out of the country, and he, too, was among them. Shahbaz Sharif said he refused to leave the country. On this, the emissary told him that in case he refused, his ailing father, mother and other family members would also not be allowed to go.
The message was astonishing, Shahbaz Sharif said, as on the one hand the government had implicated them in baseless cases and on the other he was being blackmailed in the name of his family.
The former chief minister said that he was told in plain terms that he would have to leave the country. Shahbaz Sharif said he asked the emissary that Gen Musharraf should be told that the former was reluctant to leave Pakistan and that he should not be forced. However, the message from Islamabad was that the ex-chief minister would have to do as told.
Shahbaz Sharif said people who brought him out of his jail cell shared the view that it was an injustice but they could not help him talk to the corps commander. He was first brought to Multan and then to Lahore where his brother Abbas Sharif was already present.
According to the statement, the highest military authority told him before his flight for Jeddah took off that he had great respect for him (the former chief minister). In response, he said, if it was really so, he should not force him to leave the country. He also requested that he should be sent back to Landhi Jail.
The military authority, he said, told him that it was not possible for him to oblige him and that for the time being he would have to leave the country.
Mr Shahbaz Sharif asked the army if it was justified for the institution, meant to defend the country and honour of the people, to force women to leave the country.
He said such tactics could not demoralize the Sharifs nor could they keep them away from their people and the country for long.