- Unhygienic jail conditions?
News of Nawaz Sharif’s deteriorating health – unsatisfactory ECG report, heart disease, glyceride, cholesterol and diabetes – and recommendation of urgent transfer to the intensive care unit (ICU) at PIMS has rightly raised concern far beyond PML-N’s political circles. For days now the party’s spokesmen have been telling anybody who would listen about the allegedly appalling conditions in Adiala which both father and daughter are subject to. Yet despite Nawaz’s known heart condition no efforts were apparently made to ensure that jail conditions alone would not push his health situation over the edge. If some message was being delivered, by somebody, by keeping him in an unhygienic environment, all it achieved was aggravating his health enough to send him to the ICU.
To say that this particular series of events has outraged the party would be something of an understatement. Now PML-N is shooting back, some say with good reason, that both Nawaz and Maryam were deliberately humiliated even though they respected the court’s verdict, defied mainstream analysts, and came back to the country to face arrest despite Begum Kulsoom’s precarious situation. And all the while, from the security crackdown, the manner of the arrest, to abysmal jail conditions, the so-called establishment has, according to them, clearly overplayed its hand.
Should, God forbid, things take a turn for the worse, there are chances of renewed chaos in the country. Given that Nawaz Sharif is a three-time prime minister, and has not violated any legal injunctions (except, perhaps, non-cooperation during the case which got him an extra year behind bars), there is no need not to give him allowance for his health. For his part Nawaz, after initially refusing hospital treatment, finally agreed to proper treatment. The sooner this situation is de-escalated and brought into control, the better for the government, the Sharif family and, indeed, the country.
