NAB trying to arrest Shehbaz Sharif ahead of GB election: Ahsan Iqbal

LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Secretary-General and former interior minister Ahsan Iqbal said the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was trying to arrest party president Shehbaz Sharif ahead of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) elections for Legislative Assembly.

Addressing a press conference on Saturday, Iqbal said, “Imran Ahmed Niazi won’t be permitted to repeat the 2018 playbook.” He said, “Efforts are being made, such as the planned arrest of Shehbaz in a fabricated NAB reference, to cripple the PML-N’s election campaign in Gilgit-Baltistan.” The PTI government, he said, had also planned to rig the local government elections in Punjab.

The PTI won the2018 general elections by crippling the RTS system, he added. The recent passage of different legislations by the parliament was also a product of magic, he remarked.

An attempt was being made to turn Pakistan into a fascist state by using NAB, the PML-N leader said, adding that the country has been experiencing another form of jurisprudence – NAB jurisprudence – under which every law is being defined and fitted into the anti-graft body’s narrative, Ahsan remarked.

He also questioned how the PPP and the PTI returned to power in Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the PML-N was defeated in Punjab when it had transformed the province during the previous tenure.

“And even after that, Usman Buzdar-led government was imposed in the province by magic when the PML-N was clearly had more members,” he recalled. He said that the incumbent government neither knows governance nor concerned about public issues.

The PML-N leader said that in the past two years, the rising inflation has brought people to the brink of disaster. “For the first time in the history of Pakistan, there was a shortage of wheat even before the harvest season ended,” he added.