In his farewell speech at the National Assembly (NA) on Wednesday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif termed his 16-month-long tenure as the country\u2019s chief executive the \u201cmost difficult test of my life\u201d. \u201cI never had to go through such a difficult test before in my 38-year-long [political] career as the country was mired in a severe economic crisis, oil prices remained high and there was political chaos,\u201d he said. The prime minister, who had earlier announced that the NA would be dissolved on August 9 (today), told the lawmakers that he would be sending the summary for the dissolution of the assembly to the president tonight. Moreover, he said he would meet Leader of the Opposition Raja Riaz tomorrow to discuss the candidates for the interim PM. \u201cTomorrow will be our first meeting, and as per the Constitution, we will have three days to reach a decision.\u201d He began and ended his speech by thanking lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for electing him as the PM, showing confidence in him and supporting him throughout his tenure at the helm. The government faced several challenges and difficulties during its 16-month-long brief tenure, he said, adding, \u201cWe had to bear the burden of the previous government\u2019s failure and negligence.\u201d The premier painted a bleak picture of the aftermath of what he termed the previous government\u2019s failures. He maintained that his government did \u201cnot send any political rival to jail or bothered them unfairly. This was never our practice.\u201d If a leader of a party \u2014 a reference to PTI Chairman Imran Khan \u2014 was put behind bars today, \u201cwe are not happy about it\u201d, he said. \u201cAnd if some people have distributed sweets [to celebrate the punishment], it is not right. It is not a good tradition.\u201d The premier also condemned the May 9 episode when protests had erupted across the country following Imran\u2019s arrest in a graft case. While the protests were under way, several properties, including military installations, were vandalised. \u201cMay 9 will be remembered as a black day,\u201d PM Shehbaz said, paying tributes to the armed forces and its soldiers for their sacrifices. \u201cIt was a rebellion against the army, the state and [army chief] Gen Asim Munir,\u201d he added. PM Shehbaz urged the house to adopt a resolution and pledge that \u201cno one will be allowed to commit such acts against the state or army of Pakistan ever again\u201d. He also recalled the sacrifices rendered in the fight against terrorism. \u201cEight thousand Pakistanis lost their lives and \u2026 the world acknowledges these great sacrifices. It always uses words of praise for our sacrifices and those of our army\u201d. He further mentioned the Special Investment Facilitation Council as one of the achievements of his government and expressed the hope that the interim government work further on its progress. Speaking on Balochistan, he said the province\u2019s lagged in comparison to that of other provinces. \u201cThe people of Balochistan have some other complaints as well. Their demands are fair \u2026 During my 16 months in the government, I tried my best to fulfil their fair demands,\u201d he said, stressing that Balochistan\u2019s issues needed to be addressed and resolved with sincerity. \u201cWe will work together to try and resolve the remaining issues of Balochistan, but all of us need to show some patience and tolerance. \u201cPakistan cannot grow without Balochistan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In his farewell speech at the National Assembly (NA) on Wednesday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif termed his 16-month-long tenure as the country\u2019s chief executive the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8664,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}