ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz on Wednesday purported that it was time for the public to send the sitting prime minister packing with the power of the vote.
Addressing a rally of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) organised by her party, Maryam expressed that she feels deeper sympathy for the region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) when compared to the other provinces, as they had been facing “theft” for the last eight years.
Maryam said that the stove of the poor was burning in the era of PML-N, in the previous government flour, sugar, pulses, eggs were cheap including gas and petrol. She pointed out that the economic growth rate during the rule of Nawaz Sharif had been 5.8 per cent.
Comparing this to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, she said that that the growth rate “had gone underground”, underscoring that the price of flour had risen from Rs35 per kg to Rs80, and how a simple roti that used to cost Rs5 now costs Rs20.
The PML-N vice-president said that wherever the PTI members would contest the elections, they would be defeated. I want to tell the people that when PTI come to ask for votes, show them the electricity and gas bills and medicine slips and tell them with what grace they have come to ask for votes, she added.
Earlier in the day, Maryam urged the government to resolve the issue of purportedly missing persons, wherein she “appealed” to the government to “at least inform” their families if their relatives were “dead or alive”.
Maryam was speaking to reporters at D-Chowk in Islamabad where the families of missing persons in Balochistan have gathered for days now in a camp outside the National Press Club, demanding the recovery of their loved ones.
Urging the top military leadership to resolve the matter, she said: “I want to say this to the army chief and DG ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] as well: They are citizens of your country, they are your daughters, your mothers.”
“Produce people, who are alive, in courts and those are not [alive], at least tell the families that they are dead.”
At the protest site, Maryam also met Sammi Baloch, daughter of Dr Deen Muhammad, who was “abducted” by unknown men in 2009. For over 11 years, Baloch, now 22, gathered outside the Quetta Press Club, wanting to know who took her father.
On the occasion, Maryam also censured the PTI government for failing to reach out to the protestors.
“If you cannot recover their loved ones, at least […] inform them where their loved ones, who are in torture cells, are,” she said.
“They won’t do anything, they will just cry and fall silent but at least the agony that they experience every day will end.”
Maryam also asked Prime Minister Imran Khan to visit the protestors. “[…] Prime Minister House is […] hardly five minutes away [from here],” she said.
“These girls told me they have been sitting out here for a week. You don’t have to answer the [security] agencies, you have to answer God.”
The PML-N VP also indirectly spoke out against federal ministers Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed and Fawad Chaudhry, though she did not name either of them.
“The oppressed do not have a province. Sindhi, Punjabi, even if someone is from KP or Balochistan, an oppressed person is oppressed [despite their province],” she said regarding the minister’s comments on the law and order situation.
“For God’s sake don’t sprinkle salt on their wounds. At least tell your ministers not to worsen their grief and you should come and put your hand on their heads.”
When asked why the PML-N government did not take any step to resolve the matter during its tenure, Maryam said: “All I can do right now is express solidarity […] I can let them know that they are from Balochistan but they are not alone.”
“It’s not right to abduct them in the middle of the night and not tell their families of their whereabouts for 10 years,” she maintained.
She also pointed out that courts were functional in the country and anyone suspected of being involved in a crime can be produced before them.
Independent political observers believe some missing persons may have joined militant groups, sponsored and trained by India to promote insurgency in Balochistan, and not every person missing is attributable to the state.
The military in 2018 set up a special cell at General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi to resolve cases of missing persons.
In September, the Ministry of Interior started reviewing a draft bill to criminalise enforced disappearances, with no deadline on when it will be finalised. Before that, it had been with the Ministry of Law and Justice since January 2019 for “vetting”.
