LAHORE: Former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Saturday advised Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) supremo Nawaz Sharif not to accept establishment support to come to power after the February 8 elections, The News reported.
Speaking informally to reporters at ThinkFest 2024 in Lahore, Abbasi suggested that Nawaz settle for 30 seats instead of securing 100 seats with the support of the establishment.
“Nawaz Sharif should get 30 seats instead of 100 but refuse to get the support of the establishment; one should not be deterred by the number of seats,” he advised.
He said that he does not agree with the way Nawaz is currently employing to come to power.
“Those who lack moral courage should not enter the field of politics,” he said. He also stated that there is no power in the “seat” of the Prime Minister in Pakistan and claimed that when he was the Prime Minister, he only “acted” as the Prime Minister.
The former prime minister said he has not retired from politics and is still in the PML-N. He said that he will not contest the election against his party. He said political relations with PMLN are no longer intact.
Abbasi said that the 2018 elections were stolen behind the failure of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan and he is currently facing a situation due to this episode.
He said that National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was humiliating politicians and he was the first victim of NAB. The PML-N leader said he had repeatedly requested former prime minister Shehbaz Sharif to abolish the accountability office institute.
The former prime minister said he had advised former finance minister Miftah Ismail not to resign and told him to stand firm, but the PML-N forced him to resign and “humiliated” him.
The PML-N leader had earlier said on the occasion, “We have a constitution which mentions the delimitation of provinces.” He said that Pakistan needs a democratic system and the present parliamentary system needs many improvements. He said whether it is governance or relationship system, change is inevitable. “Pakistan needs dialogue and the leadership should talk to neighboring countries,” Abbasi said, adding that earlier the system failed and people blamed each other.
He claimed that the upcoming elections will not bring any improvement and only new faces will get into the councils. He argued that politicians, the judiciary and the establishment were jointly corrupting the constitution and that Pakistan’s failure was due to a lack of leadership.
Abbasi said he did not believe the elections would solve any problems and insisted that the bureaucracy needed to be overhauled in a big way, while there was an urgent need to work on the bureaucracy in the Federation. The biggest problem here was controlling the bureaucracy and people from the local government came through corruption.
Many decades passed, the prime minister and ministers had no power; the bureaucracy was asked to work and they responded that the order came “from above”, the former prime minister claimed. He proposed immediate reforms in the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) for the benefit of the country. He claimed that there are five education systems in Pakistan, the quality of education is very poor, the education boards have completely failed and need to be improved in quality.
He called for the empowerment of women and the provision of opportunities. Women were strong but were not given opportunities, he added. In every field, women outperformed men, he claimed.
Punjab was in the forefront but more provinces should be created. He said that if anything happened to Punjab, Pakistan’s system would collapse. There is a need to have dialogue with Pashtuns and Baloch and solve their problems. He regretted that no province is working on dialogue with Pashtuns and Baloch.
In the future, no political party will be able to get a two-thirds majority, Abbasi claimed, saying that people do not know how to speak if they sit in opposition outside parliament. Abbasi said that the new generation of the country has lost hope because of the current situation in the country.
“On the issue of American intervention, I will say that if the house is weak, people will come from outside,” Abbasi said, adding that the army came when politicians gave them a chance.
Former Finance Minister Miftah Ismail said that if PTI or any party does not get the election symbol, the next election will become controversial. In an informal interview with the media at the same venue, Miftah claimed that former finance minister Ishaq Dar’s criticism of his economic policies was overheard because he was a relative of the Sharif family. “People in Pakistan are capable. It is not right to rely only on the Sharif family, the founder of PTI and the Bhutto family,” he added.
The problem of how to govern Pakistan is still not resolved, Miftah said, arguing that no one wants to follow the constitution. The problem is not the constitution but the implementation of the constitution, he added, saying the provinces do not trust each other and the country does not have a local government system, although it exists in the constitution.
