Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday made a reference towards India by saying that ‘countries around us have reached the Moon’, while blaming the military establishment for Islamabad’s ongoing economic and political problems.

Addressing the parliamentary board meeting in Lahore, the 73-year-old former PM said, “Pakistan has been stuck in difficulties. We go two steps forward and then 10 steps backwards…this has been happening for the last 75 years. Who is responsible for this?” 

Referring to India, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo said, “The countries around us have reached the Moon while we could not rise from the Earth… who is responsible for this?” Nawaz also called for holding those accountable for driving Pakistan into an unprecedented crisis and making the lives of the citizens unbearably miserable.

“Unimaginable damage has been done to his country and those responsible for it will not go unaccounted for,” he remarked. Nawaz has blamed former army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and ex-ISI chief Gen Faiz Hamid and two former chief justices of Pakistan Saqib Nisar and Asif Saeed Khosa for ousting him from power in 2017 and bringing in Imran Khan.

Nawaz Sharif on India and the US

Earlier, the PML-N supremo said that neither India nor the United States are responsible for Pakistan’s current problems. “Today where Pakistan has reached (in terms of the state of the economy) this is not done by India, the US, or even Afghanistan. In fact, we shot ourselves in our own foot…they (a reference to the military) imposed a selected (government) on this nation by rigging the 2018 polls that led to the sufferings of the people and downfall of the economy,” he said.

During a conversation with Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) ticket aspirants, the party supremo, who is eying to become prime minister for a record fourth time, pointed out that he was ousted from power three times in 1993, 1999 and 2017.

Since his return in October after four years of self-imposed exile, the former PM has been receiving clean chits in all graft cases in which he was previously convicted. He has received acquittals in the Al-Azizia Mills case and the Avenfield reference, clearing the way for him to participate in the general elections.

On the other hand, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) alleged that under the ‘London Plan’ Nawaz Sharif will be made the Prime Minister following the February 8 polls with the blessing of the military establishment under Army Chief Gen Asim Munir, while the PTI will be crushed.

On Monday, Nawaz said that in 1999, “I was prime minister in the morning and in the evening I was declared a hijacker. Similarly in 2017, I was ousted from power for not taking salary from my son.” “They (military establishment) made this decision as they wanted to bring their selected man into power,” he said, referring to his arch-rival Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf supremo Imran Khan.

(with inputs from PTI)

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