Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s Ousted Leader, Calls Court Ruling a ‘Joke’
Sharif said that What can be a bigger joke with the nation, and with a prime minister of the country, than this?
5, 2017
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s ousted prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, sharply criticized the Supreme Court verdict
that forced him to step down last week and said he was planning a big rally in his hometown, Lahore, to galvanize public support for his political party and his future.
Mr. Sharif’s failure to disclose his role in a Dubai-based company run by one of his two sons led the Supreme Court to use a clause of the Constitution
that requires public office holders to be "honest and faithful." "I never received any salary from my son’s company," Mr. Sharif said.
"How can a tax return about it be filed?" He added, "I am a man who believes in the rule of law,
but there should be law and there should be a rule." Revelations about the Sharif family’s offshore wealth first surfaced in last year’s Panama Papers, and since then, Mr. Sharif has faced allegations of corruption and money laundering, with the campaign spearheaded by Imran Khan, an opposition politician who hopes to win the prime minister’s office in the 2018 elections.
"Had it been so, I would have been very ashamed." Mr. Sharif’s political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, elected one of his longtime
loyalists as prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who is expected to lead the government until general elections scheduled for next year.
Both those developments seemed to indicate that Mr. Sharif, a populist leader who has served as prime minister three times, maintains a strong hold on his political party
and will continue to call the shots from behind the scenes.
After months of court hearings and an investigation ordered by the judiciary, the Supreme Court concluded in July
that Mr. Sharif and his children could not justify the means to buy the expensive properties they owned in London.
