ISLAMABAD: “Even in defeat we have won, and even with your victory you have lost,” a charged Nawaz Sharif decried the opposition that allied against his party in the Senate elections to be nothing more than wind-up-toys that bowed in unison.
Addressing the Central General Council meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday, the former prime minister asked, “Is this the new Pakistan?”
Nawaz termed the coming together of parties – PPP and PTI – something the country has never witnessed before.
He told a charged crowd, that the opposition leaders actions contradict their statements, calling on his supporters to make the upcoming general elections a referendum against his disqualification.
After Nawaz formally announced his brother Shehbaz as the party’s new president – a decision he said was taken due to circumstances beyond their control – the former prime minister said the PML-N manifesto would consist of only four words before he announced the battle cry demanding respect for the vote (vote ko izzat do) which echoed through the Islamabad Convention Centre.
“You’ll be respected if the vote is respected,” asserted Nawaz.
“When I look back, I don’t understand why a premier with millions of votes was removed from office,” he told a charged crowd of supporters, adding that the move sent the country into darkness.
Nawaz claimed that the prime minister often complains to him that he [Nawaz] planned so many development projects that Abbasi gets tired of inaugurating them.
He confessed that he does not wish to inaugurate development projects now as he, too, is only human. He was referring to the prime minister’s offer of inaugurating projects which he worked on personally.
The three-time premier recalled the dismal state of affairs when the PML-N took the reins of government in 2013.
Hitting out at his chief political opponent Imran Khan, Nawaz said you failed to bring about your promised ‘change’.
He said they are not leaders but an embarrassment