Exiled ex-Pak PM Nawaz Sharif to return home today

October 21, 2023 12:04

Three-time former Pakistan Prime Minister and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo Nawaz Sharif Nawaz Sharif will return home on Saturday after four years of self-imposed exile.

Ahead of his return to Pakistan after four years, Nawaz Sharif on Saturday deplored the "very chaotic" situation back home and expressed confidence that his PML-N party was "competent" to take the cash-strapped country out of the present crisis.

The 73-year-old Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo will fly in from Dubai to Islamabad on a chartered plane, former finance minister and PML-N stalwart Ishaq Dar said.

"After staying an hour or so in Islamabad, he will leave for Lahore to address a rally at Minar-i-Pakistan," Dar told journalists on Friday.

Talking to reporters at the Dubai airport, he deplored the existing situation of the country which in his words was far worse than in 2017 when he was disqualified by the Supreme Court and later convicted by an accountability court in two cases of corruption.

"The situation is not better than 2017...and it pains me to see all this that our country has gone back instead of going forward," he said, adding that it was time to think about why the country came to the situation.

"The situation in Pakistan is very chaotic and that is very worrying," Nawaz was quoted as saying by Geo News.

"We are competent enough to solve the problems of the country, he said before his departure from Dubai airport.

"People are suffering in Pakistan and it is painful but there is hope that we can improve the situation. We created the mess and only we can fix the situation."

When asked about the elections, he said that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) was empowered to decide the date of the elections.

Talking about his fate after his conviction in 2017, he said that he left everything to God and that he was successfully returning to Pakistan.

Nawaz left for London in November 2019 on medical grounds after a higher court granted him bail for four weeks. By that time, he had served half of his seven-year jail term in the Al-Azizia corruption case.

During the four years since then, Nawaz was declared a proclaimed offender in Al-Azizia and Avenfield corruption cases for his continuous absence from the proceedings on appeals against the sentences.

The Islamabad high court on Thursday granted him protective bail until October 24 in both cases after NAB did not oppose the petitions filed by him.

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