ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif stepped up his attack on President Pervez Musharraf yesterday, "I have forgotten what he did to me, what he did to my family, but I will not pardon him for what he did to Pakistan." He said "we will not give him safe exit. We will bring him to justice."
"We asked you to quit with honor after the election but you didn't," Sharif told the crowd, referring to US ally Musharraf, who overthrew him in a 1999 coup. "Now people have given a new judgment for you ... they want you to be held accountable," he said in the early hours of yesterday.
The massive crowd chanted "hang Musharraf" as it listened to the two-time former prime minister's fiery speech. "Is hanging only for politicians?" asked Sharif, referring to former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, hanged by a military dictator in 1979. "These blood-sucking dictators must be held accountable."
The demonstration, a few hundred meters from the presidency and Parliament buildings, marked the climax of an almost weeklong rolling protest across the country led by lawyers, though by the end they were easily outnumbered by Sharif party activists. The Pakistan Muslim League (N) leader said that Pakistanis now wanted Musharraf's trial instead of impeachment and asked the Parliament to take decision according to peoples' wishes. Addressing the ceremony of the participants of lawyers' "long march" aimed at reinstatement of the deposed judges in front of the Parliament House, Sharif said that Musharraf can't be given safe passage.
Hundreds of thousands of anti-Musharraf marchers converged on federal capital early yesterday demanding reinstatement of the deposed judges in no time.
As the lawyers and political leaders appeared on the stage, the participants of the "long march" shouted "Go Musharraf Go" at the top of their voice.
Paying glowing tribute to the participants of the "long march", Sharif said this was the place where Musharraf claimed before a gathering in the wake of the Karachi killing that it was a demonstration of people's power.
He asked Musharraf to come and see the real demonstration of people's power. He also asked Musharraf to listen to what the people were saying about him.
He said Musharraf had not accepted the decision the people delivered on Feb. 18 and added that now the people did not want only his ouster but his trial as well.
He said Musharraf should remember the days when innocent girl students of Jamia Hafsa college were demanding safe passage but he burned them with fire bombs. He said now Musharraf cannot be given a safe passage.
