Islamabad, Pakistan
CNN
—
Nawaz Sharif, the fugitive former prime minister of Pakistan, has returned to the South Asian nation after almost 4 years in self-exile, stirring up the nation’s already fraught political scene because it awaits what is anticipated to be a tumultuous nationwide election.
Sharif, who has served as Pakistan’s prime minister 3 times and was as soon as ousted in a navy coup, landed at Islamabad airport on Saturday, based on airport officers.
Sharif was the previous head of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), or the PML-N, certainly one of two dynastic events which have historically dominated the nation’s politics.
He was disqualified from holding workplace in a Supreme Court docket ruling regarding corruption allegations in 2017.
The next yr he was sentenced to seven years’ jail for corruption, prices he denied, however the sentence was suspended on medical grounds, permitting him to journey abroad for therapy on the situation that he return inside 4 weeks – a requirement he then flouted.
His arrival again in Pakistan comes simply days after an Islamabad court docket granted him protecting bail, which means he can’t be arrested earlier than showing in court docket.
The event raises the stakes forward of what’s already shaping as much as be a fraught election. The South Asian nation has been in a state of political turmoil because the ouster of one other prime minister, Imran Khan, a former rival of Sharif.
In current months, protests have ceaselessly erupted within the streets over Khan’s removing, rising costs, and contempt towards the nation’s highly effective navy – which Khan’s supporters declare performed a task in his ouster, although the navy denies this.
Sharif, too, beforehand blamed his downfall on the navy, which has dominated Pakistan for prolonged durations since its independence in 1947 and retains vital affect. Earlier than the 2017 ruling that ended his third spell in energy he had been ousted in a coup, in 1999, and eliminated as prime minister by a military-backed president in 1993.
Nawaz Sharif’s youthful brother, Shehbaz, welcomed the information of his brother’s bail, writing on Twitter that it was a “elementary proper.”
“The elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was disqualified primarily based on a fictitious and fabricated story,” Shehbaz Sharif wrote on X, previously often known as Twitter.
“He was implicated in absurd instances and subjected to mistreatment. Any truthful listening to would have established his innocence.”
Shehbaz Sharif was appointed prime minister in 2022, and remained within the place till August this yr, when his authorities was changed by a caretaker administration upon the dissolution of parliament forward of the nationwide election due early subsequent yr.
He got here to energy after the ouster of Khan, who’s now behind bars on corruption prices.
Shehbaz Sharif took cost at a time of crippling inflation, hovering gas and meals costs and a struggling economic system – issues which have dented the recognition of the PML-N celebration. Nawaz Sharif is anticipated to go its election marketing campaign.