Nawaz Sharif will return to Pakistan next month: PM Shehbaz

As political parties in the country gear up to run elections campaigns, though general elections are feared to be delayed, outgoing Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday said his brother and party leader Nawaz Sharif would return to Pakistan next month.

In an interview with GEO News’ Capital Talk programme host Hamid Mir, the outgoing prime minister informed that he would travel to London to meet the elder brother as soon as the caretaker government was finalised and took charge.

“Nawaz Sharif will come to Pakistan next month and will face the law and lead the election campaign,” Shehbaz said, without mentioning the exact date of Nawaz’s coming to Pakistan, who has been living in self-imposed exile in London since November 2019, after he was released on bail and left for London for medical treatment.

The elder Sharif had been on seven-year sentence for a corruption case. He was diagnosed with an immune system disorder and later travelled to London in an air ambulance.

In 2016, Nawaz was removed as the prime minister after the Supreme Court disqualified him for life for “concealing assets”. Later, the PML-N supremo was convicted in the Al-Azizia and the Aveinfield Apartment references filed by the National Accountability Bureau, which emerged in the aftermath of Panama Papers leak.

Pakistan’s National Assembly stood dissolved on Wednesday after President Dr Arif Alvi assented to a premature dissolution of the assembly shortly after PM Shehbaz Sharif forwarded the summary.

The younger Sharif held a meeting with the Opposition leader Raja Riaz on Thursday to discuss possible names for the caretaker setup.

After the meeting, Riaz said the meeting took place in a “positive environment”.

The two would meet again tomorrow (Friday) to finalise the name for the caretaker prime minister, PTV reported.