ISLAMABAD: Days after the Punjab government demolished several structures around the houses of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Afzal Khokhar and his relatives, party’s Vice President Maryam Nawaz on Wednesday claimed Prime Minister Imran Khan himself monitored the process.
The district administration and Lahore police on Sunday demolished several structures including residences of the politician’s relatives, a market, back walls, and shanties temporarily made by the workers and retrieved 206,910 square feet of “occupied land”.
The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday, while directing the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) to immediately vacate the site, restrained the district government from further demolishing the estate and other properties, directing both sides to approach the civil court for the resolution of the dispute.
Addressing the media after arriving at the family’s estate to express her sympathies, Maryam said: “I have come to know that this person whose name is Imran Khan, sat down and personally monitored the operation.”
The measure, she claimed, had come after attempts to pressurise the Khokhar brothers and holders of political office in the party.
“They were pressurised. In every party demonstration [against the PTI government], they were told to differ from the position of the party leadership or leave the party and cease participation in activities,” Maryam said. They were also “threatened,” she added.
However, when the leaders refused to abandon the party leadership and Nawaz Sharif, this action was carried out against them, she said.
Condemning the demolition of the structure, Maryam said that the PML-N “stands united” in the face of “injustice and revenge.”
By refusing to abandon Sharif’s cause, she said, the party, for the first time in its history, had refused to “bow down before injustice” and the incumbent government.
“This is a historic failure which Imran Khan and his supporters had to face,” said Maryam, adding the PML-N’s roots were entrenched deeply into the “nation and the whole of Pakistan”.
In contrast, she said, the “PTI has no such thing, it is a one-man show and when that person [Imran Khan] weakens, then this party will shatter and scatter.”
Maryam claimed in the next general elections, “no one will be ready to take a ticket of the PTI and you will see that they can’t do a demonstration or go amongst the people […] the upcoming events for them should compel them to look at their own party and leave the PML-N.”
The operation was condemned by the PML-N as an action to punish supporters of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), the umbrella alliance of the opposition parties.
