NAB’s Motive Behind Ambiguous Call-up Notice Was To Attack, Physically Harm Me – Maryam Nawaz
PMLN Central Leader Maryam Nawaz has said the vague call-up notice, the planned hooliganism of police and the attack on her vehicle show that this entire NAB appearance was a planned exercise to cause her physical harm.
Addressing a press conference at the PMLN Lahore Secretariat, Maryam said she experienced state terrorism, oppression, and aggression which are a spot of worry for the government as it shows their level of fear, frustration and helplessness. She told that the moment she reached the NAB Office, police started firing teargas and baton-charging the PMLN supportors and at the same time threw a massive rock at her car which cracked her car’s windscreen from side to side. She said had her car not been bulletproof, she most certainly could have sustained life threatening injuries. In the midst of all this going on, NAB told her to go back, which she refused because it would have been painted later as her unwillingness to appear for accountability, she said.
“Why should I have left when I had all the answers to their ridiculous questions. Even during my earlier illegal custody NAB was interested in everything else but the investigation of the said case. They asked me more about inner workings of PMLN, my interests and practices but never about the case. That was because they knew it held no ground and that is why even after 1 and a half years they still haven’t been able to file that reference”, she argued.
She showed the NAB call-up notice which does not level any accusations on her and said that NAB used media for it propaganda as if she had been accused by NAB of illegal practices in procuring land.
Maryam said she remained in front of the NAB office for around one and a half hour amid stone pelting but they didn’t let her in. She said Rana Sanaullah asked them for written directive of not appearing before NAB which they initially refused but later issued a press release saying the appearance before NAB had been cancelled.
She paid rich tribute to the thousands of PMLN workers who remained steadfast and undeterred despite being badly wounded by the baton-charging, tear-gas, mace and stone-pelting. She also thanked her guards who bravely remained by her car when it was raining down stones.
She strongly rejected government propaganda that PMLN workers brought stones themselves and said it would be a ridiculous thing to imagine that PMLN dressed it’s workers as policemen and them attacked her own car endangering her life and their own people and wound them badly.
Maryam said she and the entire PMLN knows the agenda of the NAB and after the decisions and remarks of the Supreme Court and the High Court there is no legal or moral justification for NAB to even exist. The last nail in the coffin was the Human Rights Watch report that clearly dubbed NAB as a tool of political engineering, political victimisation and persecution.
The PMLN Leader said, “NAB, in fact, is the biggest defaulter and wrongdoer in Pakistan thay needs to be held accountable for using exchequer money for political agenda and engineering. The statement of PTI Minister that he will plead to Imran Khan to let Mir Shakeel-ur-Rehman go, is a proof of who runs NAB. Imran didn’t abduct Mir Shakeel-ur-Rehman, NAB did. Yet even the PTI is very clear about who is using it for political victimisation and as a gag-tool “.
She said NAB is very clear about its objective of not just committing political engineering, victimisation, injustice and persecution but to make sure that everyone knows exactly what is going on so that Imran’s opponents would stay silent for the fear of all this happening to them. But it has failed to silent the resilience of PMLN, she said.
Maryam said she her first NAB case was to keep her from contesting elections, the second was to stop her massive public realities and this third one is because the government’s private surveys have told them the massive spike in PMLN support across the country and especially in Punjab.
“PTI and Imran were overly anxious to come into power and are now equally desperate to stay in power because they fear that is the only way to save them from accountability over the mass corruption, political victimisation and damage they have dealt to the country. Imran himself has said that he has been given just 6 more months to get his act together and deliver. But he cannot do that even in 600 years because he lacks the ability, the vision and the focus needed. Imran said he has burnt all his boats because he knows what’s in store for him after the level of oppression, brutalities and cruelty he has subjected the opposition to”, she said.
This incapacity and incompetence is coupled with Imran’s misplaced priorities. His obsession with Nawaz Sharif and only that in every meeting, every government policy, every act of every institution has destroyed the country because of his raging vengeance, she said. And yet he shamelessly inaugurates dozens of Nawaz’s projects, which he exposes the rock-bottom level of his dignity, she slammed.
She said according to Imran’s own criteria his government is the most corrupt government in Pakistan’s history because if you compare the prices of sugar, wheat, flour, lentils, petrol, diesel, electricity and gas they have skyrocketed under his rule. Imran himself said that inflation is a product of government corruption, she reminded.
The Imran government did not just fail terribly in one domain, but has been a colossal disaster in every sector. The recent foreign policy blunder of upsetting Pakistan’s long time friend Saudi Arabia and then the OIC are an example. Never in the history of any ruler did India dare to revoke IOK’s disputed status but Imran’s massive incompetence emboldened them to do so.
“If changing maps, observing 1 minute silence and renaming roads was the best foreign policy response of enemy’s moves, Nawaz Sharif would have called for 12 minutes silence over India’s 5 nuclear tests and renamed Bani Gala to Chaghi”, she lambasted.
Maryam rejected the notion of a split in party narrative. She said as a democratic party PMLN welcomes and entertains difference of opinion but everyone is united in the party narrative under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif.
Talking about the APC she said Nawaz had given clear instructions to use the APC forum to its maximum potential and cooperate with JUI-F Leader Mualana Fazl-ur-Rehman in every way.
