FAZAL SHER
ISLAMABAD: Stepping up criticism on judiciary, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Monday said that recent actions taken by top judiciary were not even seen during martial law regimes.
Talking to reporters inside the Accountability Court hearing corruption cases against him and his family members, Sharif said that such kinds of restrictions, which are now being imposed, were not even imposed in martial law regimes.
He said whatever is going on in the country is not democracy but the worst kind of dictatorship. Directly criticising Chief Justice Main Saqib Nisar, he said that the Chief Justice visits hospitals and talks about vegetable prices, but he should also visit the families of those persons whose cases remain have undecided for as many as 20 years.
Addressing to the Chief Justice, he said, “It is not your job to summon the chief minister of a province and make the government high-ups stand in the line.” He said that the Chief Justice gives his remarks but when somebody else speaks then he comes under restrictions on freedom of speech. “If you say something about others, you should also listen to others,” he said.
Efforts are being made to convict him in corruption references in order to make the five judges successful, he claimed while referring to the five-member Supreme Court bench that disqualified him last year in the Panama Papers case.
To a question about the recent statement of emir Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Siraj-ul-Haq that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had voted for Sadiq Sanjrani following an “order from the top,” Sharif said that Haq’s statement is “very meaningful”.
He said the PTI chief has reprimanded his party members of provincial assembly who were allegedly found engaged in horse-trading, but Khan should also ask himself on whose orders his party voted for Sanjrani. Sharif also asked Imran to inform public how the party’s candidate Chaudhry Sarwar managed to bag the Senate seat from Punjab.
To a question about releasing water in the grounds of Lahore’s Mochi Gate where Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) was staging a rally, he said there should have been no hurdles to the PTM rally, adding it is wrong to stop them from staging a protest as it is their constitutional right.
