Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo Nawaz Sharif will be the next leader of the nation if the party wins the next general election.
According to PM Shehbaz Sharif, the three-time former prime minister who has been living in self-inflicted exile in London since 2019, is planning to return to the country in the next few weeks.
PM Shehaz, also the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party president, said his elder brother Nawaz Sharif will face the law upon his arrival in Pakistan. He also added that Nawaz Sharif was sent to London on medical grounds on the basis of a health report prepared on the instructions of former prime minister Imran Khan.
Nawaz Sharif was debarred in 2017 by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. In 2018, after a Supreme Court verdict in the Panama Papers case, he was ruled out to hold public office for a lifetime. Before he departed to London on a four-week bail by the Lahore High Court on a medical basis, Nawaz Sharif was serving a seven-year jail sentence in the Al-Azizia Mills corruption case.
A notification of the dissolution of the National Assembly will be presented to President Arif Alvi a few days before the completion of the seven-year jail tenure at midnight on 12 August 2023, according to Shehbaz Sharif.
Shehbaz Sharif alleged that the PML-N will try to make seat arrangements with allied parties in the upcoming general elections. He further said that the party would field its candidates in the constituencies where they were not able to reach a consensus. He said the caretaker arrangement would be approved only after consultation with allied parties, the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly Raja Riaz, and PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif.
