Islamabad, Oct 2 (IANS) Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said Saturday that the current Pakistan Peoples Party-led government is fast exhausting all its options available and ‘a change at the top is inevitable if the rulers do not mend their ways’.
‘Government is on a collision course with other powerful institutions like judiciary and it does not augur well for its future,’ Sharif said in a TV interview Saturday night. ‘I have been pointing out such follies repeatedly but they have paid no heed,’ he recalled.
‘We don’t want to indulge in horse trading but there are several ways of change to take effect. The no confidence will emerge into something drastic,’ said Sharif, who heads the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
He singled out the ‘government’s inability to act in a mature manner during the crisis caused by floods’ and said this contributed to ‘a trust-deficit amongst the masses’. ‘The role of armed forces during the situation was commendable but it has no role in running the affairs of state,’ he noted.
‘It is regrettable that the government failed to set up a commission for transparent generation and disbursement of funds,’ the former premier said. The country’s worst flash floods rocked human life and infrastructure across Pakistan for almost two months and left over 1,700 people dead and more than 20 million homeless.
Sharif alleged that ‘(former military ruler and president Pervez) Musharraf gave money to Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid to rig the 2008 elections after our departure’. ‘The nomination papers of our candidates were rejected at will to keep us out of the assemblies and we have proof of such activities,’ he claimed.
Musharraf had toppled the government of Nawaz Sharif in 1999 in a military coup when the latter tried to remove him as chief of army staff. After ruling the country for nine years, Musharraf resigned in 2008 and went into self-imposed exile before launching his political party Oct 1 in London.
