Observer Report
London
Pakistan Muslim League-N President Shahbaz Sharif on Wednesday said that his assets were frozen due to an alliance between Prime Minister Imran Khan and the National Accountability Bureau.
The former Punjab chief minister was addressing a press conference during which he lashed out at the anti-graft body, claiming that it was a part of Imran Khan’s ‘team’.
“I have always said that an alliance between Imran Niazi and NAB exists,” he said. “However, their alliance failed yet again,” Shahbaz Sharif said.
His remarks came a day after PTI senior counsel Naeem Bokhari withdrew a set of appeals challenging bail granted to Shahbaz in the Ashiana case and the Ramzan Sugar Mills case.
NAB had failed to convince the Supreme Court what role the former chief minister had played in the Ashiyana-i-Iqbal Housing Scheme. It had sought to establish that Shahbaz had abused his authority as chief minister.
In the press conference, Shahbaz discussed the court proceedings and criticised how “despite an army of NAB prosecutors”, PTI’s Naeem Bukhari had appeared to defend the case.
“When Naeem Bukhari sahib saw things are not panning out for him, he voluntarily withdrew his applications which had sought the cancellation of my bail.”
Shahbaz said that over the past year-and-a-half a malicious propaganda had been undertaken by “Imran Khan Niazi and his ministers” in which poisonous remarks were made but the comments given by the honourable bench, and especially the chief justice, in yesterday’s hearing had “separated all the truth from the lies”.
The PML-N president said he had never before seen a prime minister “more divisive, egoistic, ungrateful and full of anger” than Prime Minister Imran Khan.
“No one in the country has any doubt of the way he attempted to push the opposition against the wall, seeking their conviction in false cases and spewing poisonous remarks against them.
“If he had spent even one-tenth of this energy and time in changing Pakistan’s fortunes, the country would not have been in the dire state it is,” said Shahbaz. He told the media he is “confident that Mian Nawaz Sharif will also be proven innocent”.
He said “without going into too many details” he wished to provide “just one example” of development projects undertaken during the rule of Mian Nawaz Sharif.
