By Uzma Zafar
ISLAMABAD: Minister for Interior Sheikh Rasheed on Sunday said that PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz is “digging her political grave”, referring to the often blunt nature of the statements she makes.
Rasheed’s remarks, while speaking to the media, come a day after the Opposition’s Pakistan Democratic Movement held a large public rally in Faisalabad’s Dhobi Ghaat ground, where Maryam, who was representing the PML-N in the absence of party president Shahbaz Sharif, spoke at length in criticism of the current regime.
The minister warned Maryam that dragging the army into a debate at Dhobi Ghaat or Lahore’s Mochi Gate will “result in a political smackdown similar to what occurs in a dhobi ghaat” (when clothes are beaten with sticks while washing them).
He said Maryam’s moves to call out state institutions and speak against the country’s leaders is “foolish”. “With these judo karate-like manoeuvres with the aim to slander (institutions), she is digging her political grave,” he remarked. Rasheed said that Prime Minister Imran Khan is “going nowhere” and will complete his five-year term. He said that ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, on the other hand, “hatched a plan to go to London” and is now “crying crocodile tears”.
In the Faisalabad rally yesterday, Maryam had told the nation that the time to them to decide their future and to change their fate is now, as she sought their support to oust PM Imran Khan.
Speaking of the government’s recent statement, whereby Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhry had remarked that the prime minister has the prerogative to appoint the Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), she said that it may very well be his prerogative to do so, but “electing the prime minister is the prerogative of the people”.
“The people should first choose their own prime minister and then he may decide what to do,” she said, adding: “Imran Khan is not an elected leader; he is selected.”
Maryam also said that PM Imran Khan “carried out a suicide attack on a state institution for the sake of power”; his stand is “not for the Constitution”. She further said that the prime minister has “trampled the honour of the vote under his shoe”, and warned him to not try to be a “political martyr”. “For your repeated oppression, the people are ready to ‘take care’ of you,” she added.
