‘I will neither cower down, nor yield to pressure’

• Maryam sees worries in her father’s eyes

Pakistan Muslim League-N leader Maryam Nawaz, daughter of the prime minister, on Tuesday said that she saw her father’s eyes filled with concern and apprehension over her appearance before the Joint Investigation Team (JIT).

The investigation team, constituted by the Supreme Court to probe businesses and financial dealings of Sharif family, has summoned the first daughter on Wednesday. In a series of tweets, Maryam said that her father has been through testing times in more than 30 years of his political career acting out his rivals.

“Yet as an affectionate and protective father, I saw his eyes filled with concern and apprehensions over his daughter’s appearance before JIT,” she stated on social media. “I am your daughter, trained by you, I will neither cower down, nor yield to pressure and nothing will deter me from taking up the cudgels against transgression and injustice,” she said that she told her father.

The first daughter also said that she would appear before the investigation team and follow the rule of law like her father. Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that there were no moral grounds for summoning of Maryam Nawaz by the JIT.

“Our culture teaches us to respect women,” he said, pointing out that women in the Sharif family were also subjected to mistreatment during the unconstitutional government of Pervez Musharraf. However, he said that they admit the investigation team’s privilege to summon a person before it as a witness.

“Those giving examples of the late Benazir Bhutto incarcerated our father and did not even provide him with medicines during detention,” he said. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s elder son Hussain Nawaz appeared before the JIT for the sixth time.

Maryam will be the sixth member of the Sharif family to appear before the high-profile probe team, formed on May 6 in light of the Supreme Court’s April 20 judgment in the Panama Papers case.