After four years in exile, former Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif has returned to his home country. He is apparently aiming for a political comeback with a view to next year’s elections.
Former three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif has returned to Pakistan from his exile. The former head of government flew on a charter plane from Dubai to Islamabad, where he landed in the early afternoon. After his arrival in Pakistan’s capital, Sharif wanted to fly on to Lahore, according to his conservative Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party. There was supposed to be a big welcome event there, at which thousands of the ex-prime minister’s supporters gathered that morning.
“We are totally ready for elections,” he said before his departure from Dubai. “Our country, which should be supremely prosperous, has moved backwards,” Sharif said, asking: “How did it come to this? Why did it come to this?”
Sharif is now expected to support the election campaign of his conservative Pakistan Muslim League, which provided Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif until parliament was dissolved in August. This in turn is Nawaz Sharif’s brother.
In exile for several years
In 2019, the politician went into exile in England after being sentenced to several years in prison in 2018 on corruption charges. In order to avoid direct arrest of the 73-year-old, the High Court in Islamabad on Thursday ordered that the man not be taken into custody upon his arrival.
Sharif will now seek to have his conviction overturned so he can lead his party in parliamentary elections scheduled for January, his daughter Maryam Nawaz said.
Sharif was first appointed prime minister in 1990, but was forced to resign early in 1993 after a political dispute with the military-backed President Ghulam Ishaq Khan. He also did not complete his subsequent terms of office.