Waseem Abbasi
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Senior Vice-President Maryam Nawaz Sharif has said that former prime minister and party supremo Nawaz Sharif will return to Pakistan in a few weeks and lead the election campaign.
In an exclusive interview with Wenews, Maryam Nawaz said: “Nawaz Sharif will be among us in a few weeks. He will not only lead the election campaign but also lead Pakistan.” She said this when asked about the homecoming of the former premier from exile.
Maryam Nawaz said that all significant and unprecedented development projects in the country, ranging from nuclear explosions to motorways, fiber optics to airports, had had Nawaz Sharif’s stamp on them. When Wenews asked if Nawaz Sharif ever told her she was the future prime minister, Maryam Nawaz instantly replied, “he never said that.”
In the interview, when the PML-N leader was asked if Nawaz Sharif ever scolded her after a public meeting, she said, “very often, when she gets out of the car, he scolded her for that.”
“He says I don’t care about my security. He keeps an eye on me every time and tells me what to talk about and what not to do. He 99 percent appreciates that I delivered a good speech and my points were also good.”
She said he used to guide her more often in the past, but now his confidence has increased, and he says nothing.
Maryam Nawaz said that Nawaz Sharif had also signed an agreement with the IMF (International Monetary Fund), but the prices of all essential items remained stable for four years. “It wasn’t a small thing.”
“When Mian Sahib came to power in 2013, where was the inflation rate, but in four years, Mian Sahib brought it down to single digit. The growth rate was two percent, but when Mian Sahib left the prime ministership, the growth rate was 6 percent, and the expected growth rate was projected at 7 percent.
“You see where that rate was in those four years. Each index was going up. The investment was coming to the country. The CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) project was the largest investment in Pakistan’s 70-year history. Roads and motorways were being built. Twenty-two hours of load-shedding in the country had been brought down to zero. Power plants were installed in months, and power generation increased. All major projects like the Orange Line and the Metro Bus were works of Nawaz Sharif,” she said.
