- Ex-PM says elections should be held in 2018
Former prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has said that the Panama Papers case verdict should be announced as soon as possible so that normalcy can be restored in the country.
Addressing a press conference here on Sunday, he said that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was an ideological party and would wait for the Supreme Court’s decision. The government should complete its term and elections should be held in 2018, he said.
Talking about election reforms, Gilani said that all parties need to work for them. “Without election reforms, we cannot have transparent elections,” he said. “We need election reforms for real change,” he said. He also said that it was only the PPP that has actually represented the people of southern Punjab.
“All the presidents, ministers and governors from this region were nominated by the PPP,” he said. “Both the Pakistan Muslim League-N and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf will give us nothing,” he said. To a question, Gilani pointed out that he was the first prime minister to have spoken about foreign interference in Balochistan.
SHEIKH RASHEED: Speaking to media at his residence in Rawalpindi, former federal minister and Awami Muslim League Chairman MNA Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad claimed that Nawaz Sharif has decided to bring in a new prime minister anticipating his ‘disqualification’ in the Panama Papers case.
He also claimed that there would be a ‘good number’ of defections from the PML-N the moment the Supreme Court sends Nawaz Sharif packing. “Around 40 MNAs were ready to ditch PML-N to rejoin the party of former president General Pervez Musharraf,” he added.
“Nawaz Sharif will be shown the exit door next week,” he claimed. “He (Nawaz) is mulling over the names of his aides for premiership,” he said. He also said that if Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif was selected it would ‘widen’ rift within the party as Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Senator Ishaq Dar and Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif were not happy with his nomination as the new premier.
The former minister claimed that if National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq was elected, another Prime Minister’s House would be set up in Lahore which Sharifs won’t tolerate.
